The letter
The children we carry
Some losses leave a houseful of memories. Others leave a due date that still lives in your body, a name you chose and never got to call out loud, a nursery you had only started to imagine.
A miscarriage. A stillbirth. A baby who lived only hours, or days. These are among the most profound losses a person can carry, and among the loneliest, because the world so often does not know they happened, or does not know what to say, so it says nothing at all.
I want to be clear about something this month. Your baby was real. The love did not wait for a full term or a first breath to begin. You were already a parent, already planning, already in love, and so the grief is real too. It is measured by that love, not by how many weeks you carried or how many people knew.
If this is your grief, hear me. You are a mother. You are a father. The fact that your arms stayed empty does not make you any less a parent, and it does not make your child any less yours.
I have buried children of my own, grown sons, and I will not pretend our griefs are the same. But I have learned this at a cost: there is no small way to lose a child. However brief the life, however quiet the loss, a whole imagined future goes with them. This month, I want the children the world rarely let you name to be named, and remembered.
Grace to you, by the cup, Tyra K. Little
Say this instead
Instead of“at least you can have another,” or “it was not really a baby yet,” or “everything happens for a reason,”
Try“I am so sorry. Your baby mattered, and so does your grief. Tell me their name, if you want to.”
Those first phrases, even when kindly meant, tell a grieving parent that their loss was small or that it was supposed to happen. It was not small, and no parent needs a reason handed to them. They need their child acknowledged.
Truth over myth
The myth: an early loss is not as hard, and the sooner you move on, the better.
Grief does not read the calendar of a pregnancy. A loss at eight weeks and a loss at full term are both the loss of a child, and of the whole life you had already imagined. There is no hierarchy here, and no clock. Some parents carry this quietly for the rest of their lives. That is not weakness. That is love with nowhere to land.
Grief 101
Say the baby’s name, and remember the date.
If you love someone who has lost a pregnancy or a baby, do not step around it for fear of reminding them. They have not forgotten. If they named their child, use the name. If you know the due date or the day of the loss, mark it. A short message, “I am remembering your little one this month,” tells a grieving parent the most important thing: my child existed, and someone else remembers.
What is ahead
October
- All month October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. A month to name the children the world so rarely lets you name.
- Oct 15 The Wave of Light. Light a candle at 7:00 p.m. in your time zone, so a wave of light circles the globe in memory of these children.
- Any time If you or someone you love is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is there, day or night. Call or text 988
Carry this
The child you carry in your heart is not carried alone.
God did not lose track of the ones who never made it into your arms. They are known, and named, and held, and the love you still carry for them is not wasted or foolish. It is holy. Light the candle this month without apology. Say the name out loud. And let grace be poured, by the cup, for a love that outlived its too-short time.