Finding Words for Untold Grief: Trying to Conceive, Pregnancy, Postpartum, and Loss
I have been a writer since I was five years old. What started as scrawling notes into those tiny plastic covered notebooks closed with small silver locks and mini matching keys only hidden behind my bed each night didn’t just become a place for me to unpack my day or to write about my latest crush. Those journals became a space for me to search for language about what I was experiencing (such as bullying, teasing, taunting), and what I was about to endure: my parent’s divorce, the sudden, unexpected death of a very close adult in my life, and a transition away from a place that felt like home and people that felt like family.
As I aged, I struggled again with finding language to describe certain moments. It felt like there was key vocabulary missing in spots that should’ve been developed so long ago. So.. I started taking a stab at creating that language myself.
I think there is something incredibly powerful about finding the language that finally makes you feel seen- not fixed, not healed, and not suddenly okay, but simply… represented.
When clinical terms fail real lived experiences
For a long time, I struggled to explain my experiences with infertility, pregnancy loss, postpartum depression, chronic illness, and grief because the language available to me felt incomplete. It was too clinical in some spaces, too polished in others, and too centered around outcomes that didn’t reflect my reality.
I knew what had happened to me physically. I could recite diagnoses and procedures and timelines with startling precision. But emotionally? Spiritually? As a mother? As a person trying desperately to survive inside a body and brain that no longer felt safe? I often couldn’t find words that felt like they belonged to me.
And when you can’t find language for your experience, it becomes remarkably easy to believe you are alone in it.
That, dear readers, is what I do not EVER want you to feel. That’s why I’m here writing to you today.
The gap between popular phrases and emotional realities
Over the years, I realized how many common terms fall short when describing reproductive loss and grief.
The complexity of the term "rainbow baby"
I remember first hearing the term “rainbow baby” after one of my miscarriages. People used it lovingly, generously, hoping to offer comfort and hope. While I deeply understand why the phrase resonates for so many families, I remember sitting quietly with the realization that it didn’t fully fit for me.
This wasn't because I wasn’t grateful for my living child, or because joy and grief couldn’t coexist. It was because the losses that came before and after her weren’t storms that simply passed. They permanently reshaped me. I didn’t feel like someone who had neatly moved from tragedy into sunshine. I felt like someone who was trying desperately to carry all of it simultaneously.
Why "trying to conceive" sounds too soft
Then there were phrases like “trying to conceive,” which somehow sounded far too casual for what infertility actually demanded of us. Trying sounded soft, temporary. and lighthearted, even.
Meanwhile, my reality involved injections, surgeries, invasive testing, loss after loss, financial strain, grief, hypervigilance, and years of my life organized around ovulation cycles and pregnancy outcomes.“Trying” barely scratched the surface.
Postpartum depression without a living baby
Even the term postpartum felt confusing after pregnancy loss.
Was I postpartum after delivering twins too early to survive? Was I postpartum after my ruptured ectopic pregnancy?
My body said yes. My hormones said yes. My depression and anxiety absolutely said yes.
Yes culturally, postpartum conversations are still overwhelmingly centered around parenting a living newborn. I often found myself existing in spaces where I simultaneously belonged and didn’t belong at all. That kind of invisibility changes you.
Why words matter in advocacy, healing, and community
Over the last several years, I’ve become deeply intentional about searching for - and sometimes needing to create - language that feels more affirming and expansive to what I feel inside, to the way I need others to understand what I have experienced or am living through or am simply trying to survive.
I do this not only for myself, but for others navigating these deeply layered experiences too. Because words matter. The language we use determines who feels invited into the conversation. It shapes who feels acknowledged in support groups, medical offices, articles, advocacy campaigns, and online communities. It influences whether someone feels like their grief “counts.” Whether their trauma is valid enough. Whether they are allowed to identify as a parent, a postpartum person, someone living with reproductive trauma, or someone struggling mentally after loss.
Sometimes finding the right language is what finally allows someone to ask for help.
Creating space for uncategorized grief
I think often about how many people are silently carrying experiences that don’t fit neatly into existing categories.
- The mothers who experienced postpartum depression after stillbirth, like me.
- The parents navigating infertility and secondary infertility simultaneously.
- The families parenting living children while actively grieving babies who died, like us.
- The people whose postpartum experiences are complicated by chronic illness, disability, medical trauma, or pregnancy termination.
So many of us are still searching for words large enough to hold what we’ve lived through.
Maybe that’s part of the work now. Not forcing ourselves into language that minimizes or erases us, but expanding the conversation wide enough for more people to see themselves reflected back.
Representation is not just about visibility- it’s about belonging.It’s about hearing someone describe an experience you thought only existed inside your own body and realizing, maybe for the very first time:
"Oh. There’s a name for this. I’m not the only one."