Somehow, grief seemed to turn into an entirely different monster at night. Once everything quieted down, the absence of my child filled every corner of the room, and sleep felt like something that belonged to another life.

There are no magic words that will fix grief. There is no perfect sentence that will suddenly make a grieving mother feel better. So please, do not put pressure on yourself to come up with the perfect thing to say.

Journaling is about so much more than writing. It is about giving your heart somewhere to rest. It is about letting the pages hold some of the thoughts and emotions that have become too heavy to carry alone.

I’ve learned over the past 9 years that grief doesn’t respond well to being managed or minimised. You don’t tell someone how to grieve. When you do, you place an unbearable pressure on an already fragile heart

The truth is that learning how to care for yourself in grief is not a luxury or a sign that you’re moving on. It is an important part of surviving loss.

Dealing with birthdays and anniversaries after child loss can feel incredibly heavy in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who has never lived through it.