Infant and Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month

With Fall officially settling in, leaves falling, and routines beginning to establish. Fall can be a place for new beginnings or can also be a place of entering into a new season. Bringing awareness to the nature of this blog, taking a moment to recognize that fall can be a time for healing. October is Infant and Pregnancy loss awareness month (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2023). This is a time to remember and honour all who have experienced infertility challenges, an ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal or postnatal baby loss. Infant and Pregnancy loss month is a month to bring awareness, and a heartfelt message to recognize the unmet, hopes, dreams, and expectations of all the infants that we have lost. 

Grief is about broken heartedness. Grievers want to be heard, validated, and seen in their grief. 

In accordance with The Grief Recovery Method Handbook, grief is “the normal and natural feeling of a loss of any kind” and/or “the conflicting group of human emotions caused by an end to or change in a familiar pattern of behaviour” (James & Friedman, 2017, p.3).

Have you ever heard the saying “time heals all wounds”?  Truly, there is no timeline when it comes to grief. The true essence within this time of healing, is the action-oriented steps (James & Friedman, 2017).

The Grief Recovery Method is an evidence - based action - orientated program that achieves completion of over 40 different types of losses. Completing all of the undelivered messages of the unmet hopes, dreams, and expectations. When it comes to completion of these undelivered messages of motherhood and/or fatherhood, this is the emotional energy of where motherhood and/or fatherhood arose. Whether this be the longing of being a mom and/or dad, seeing the positive pregnancy test, or having dreams of being a mom and/or dad. Completing is not forgetting (James & Friedman, 2017).

“There are no absolutes in grief. There are no reactions so universal that all, or even most, people will experience them. There is only one unalterable truth: All relationships are unique” (James & Friedman, 2017, pp. 14-15).

Relationships have physical, emotional, and spiritual connections.  Recovery means feeling better — recovery is one day realizing your ability to talk about the loss you have experienced (James & Friedman, 2017). All grief and all emotional energy matters. The Grief Recovery Method focuses on the emotional heart connection. As we focus on the action- orientated steps, we are able to focus on grief recovery and emotional completeness.  

A Global Remembrance Day ~ “International Wave of Light”

Tuesday October 15th, 2024, at 7pm, a global remembrance day, “International Wave of Light” is a day this year where you can join in, lighting a candle in honouring and remembering our babies we have lost (Wave of Light – Baby Loss Awareness Week, 2024). 

#InfantLossAwareness #RememberingourBabies #HealingTogether

Blog Written by Brittany Zabolotniuk

Brittany is a Registered Provisional Psychologist on our Capilano team.

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