The Grief That Begins Before Hello

For the pregnancies and babies the world never saw, but our hearts still remember.

Trigger Warning: Pregnancy Loss

Wednesday was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

I sat in my sanctuary. The room in my house where I go to reconnect and recenter. It’s not fancy. I carried a weight in my chest. I lit a candle, inviting some softness in the air. This is where I come to tell the truth to myself.

I didn’t have a plan to write about this today, but the moment I lit the candle, I felt the pull. Grief doesn’t like schedules. It arrives the way weather does, on its own time, without apology.

I’ve lost two pregnancies. One when I was still practically a kid. One when I was in my forties. Twenty years apart, nearly to the day, but they sit right next to each other inside me. Like ghosts. Like echoes.

The first happened fast. I barely understood what was going on. I hadn’t really told anyone yet. I hadn’t had time to decide how I felt. I wasn’t ready. Not even close. I was no longer with the father. I was still figuring out how to pay rent, how to be in my body, how to move through the world without flinching. And then it was over.

People told me it was lucky. That I was young. That I’d have time. I told myself the same thing. For a while, it worked. I tucked the grief away and moved on. But that pain found its way back in quiet moments, years later, standing in a Target aisle, watching someone hold a toddler, or hearing a lullaby in a commercial, and suddenly crying for no reason. Even as I continue to sit in the deep knowing that it was “for the best”, the grief of that loss still shows up. I randomly think about the way my life would have turned out if that baby had come to me.

The second loss was different.
And I hate how often I have to say that sentence.

I was beyond ready that time. No, it wasn’t planned, but my life was calm. I had my own money, a roof over my head, a body I finally trusted enough to want this. There was no chaos. No confusion. There was space for a child. I had spent years waiting for that alignment. Aching to become a mother. A mother… I was meant to be a mother.

I knew I was pregnant the moment it happened. That sounds a bit out there, I know, but it’s just the truth. My body told me. There was a shift, subtle but undeniable. I felt a soft yes move through me, quiet but certain. I can still close my eyes years later and relive that moment.

I didn’t need a test to tell me what I already knew. But I took one anyway. And then another. And then I sat on the edge of my bed and imagined everything. Because of my history with PCOS and infertility, I made a doctor’s appointment immediately. Somewhere deep inside I knew. I knew I wouldn’t carry to term.

And I wasn’t wrong.

I started bleeding before I ever got to tell the father. I remember looking down at the toilet paper, that faint red streak, and knowing it was already over. It was like watching something vanish that I hadn’t even fully gotten to touch.

At the hospital, the nurse said, It was a chemical pregnancy.

And I wanted to scream.

Chemical pregnancy. As if it were a science problem. A failed equation. As if I hadn’t already felt the rearranging in my body. As if I hadn’t already imagined a name. A room. A tiny hand curling around my finger.

They said it like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t real.

I went home with a hollow ache. The kind of emptiness that follows you into sleep. I told myself not to make a big deal of it. I told myself not to be dramatic. I told myself to move on.

But I knew.
This wasn’t just a pregnancy that ended. This was the end of the road.

I was in my forties. I struggled with infertility my entire adult life.
This had been my last shot.

It’s kind of like a sharp knife in the chest when you know there won’t be another chance.

Some griefs are loud enough to demand support.
Others get quiet so they don’t make anyone uncomfortable.

This one became the kind that lives under the floorboards.

The shame crept in slowly. I started asking questions in my head that I would never ask another person. Was I too excited? Was I too stressed? Did I tell my sisters too soon? Did I do something wrong?

Even now, years later, I can feel that blame trying to circle back.

Grief can be a doorway for shame if we’re not careful. And shame knows how to disguise itself. Sometimes it wears the voice of responsibility. Sometimes it calls itself logic. But it’s always just fear and guilt, wrapped in false certainty.

My body remembered the loss even after the bleeding stopped.
My breasts stayed sore for weeks.
I cried in places I usually felt strong—grocery stores, the car, walking the dog.
My nervous system was thrown off for months.
There were days I would sit down and feel the phantom weight of possibility in my belly, even though I knew there was nothing left to carry.

The world doesn’t like this kind of grief.
The one that never got to grow.
The one that doesn’t come with a photo.
The one that ends before anyone else even knew it began.

We don’t know what to do with people who have been mothers in silence.
We don’t know what to say to the ones who carried a life and then lost it before it showed.
And so we say nothing.
Or worse, we say, At least it was early.
At least you didn’t get too far along.
At least you can try again.

I heard all of that.
And none of it helped.

There’s a strange in-between that exists after pregnancy loss. You’re not childless, not exactly. You carried something, even briefly. But you’re not seen as a mother, either. You have no proof. No words to describe it that don’t feel clunky or dramatic.

You’re left holding something invisible. Something you can’t explain. And the world keeps moving like it never happened.

But it did happen.

I lit a candle on Wednesday for both of them.
For the girl who wasn’t ready and the woman who finally was.
For the body that knew, and the heart that still remembers.

It was the first time I really allowed myself to fully acknowledge the losses. The grief.

I didn’t do anything elaborate. I just sat. I whispered thank you. I cried. I breathed. I let the silence stretch. I let myself be a mother for a moment, maybe not in the eyes of the world, but in the only place that ever mattered.

If I could go back, I’d tell both versions of myself:
You are allowed to feel it all.
You are allowed to grieve even if no one else knew.
You are allowed to love something that barely had time to begin.
You don’t need to justify your sorrow.
You don’t need to be over it.
You don’t need to explain.

Some things begin and end before they ever make it into language.
Some loves never make it to paper, pictures, or celebration.
Some heartbreaks are this quiet.

And still, they change us.

Love today,
Heather 🌸