Five Things That I Want My Daughter to Know About Grief After Losing My Son

By Aleah Toews

In 2023 my son Alex was unexpectedly and tragically stillborn. While we were still deep in grief, I found out that I was pregnant again. One year later my little nugget girl pushed her way into our lives and into our hearts. She was born two weeks before what would have been her brothers first birthday. 

Pregnancy after loss is a terrifying, helpless experience. Once she was earthside, the hypervigilance did not disappear overnight. I thought I would be able to relax once she was here, but a whole new set of challenges emerged. One of them being, how do I talk to her about her brother, a sibling she never got to meet. I may not always have the right words, but these are some of the things I want her to know about what grief is and what it isn’t. 

1. Grief is not here to teach her a lesson

Death is not some great cosmic plan to make her a better person, bring purpose and fulfillment to her life, turn lemons into lemonade or whatever other cliché comes to mind. Sometimes terrible things happen. It’s not because of something we did. Or something anyone else did. It’s just that we live in a fragile broken world. 

2. Grief does not disappear over time

Time heals all wounds is another adage that gets thrown around after someone dies. What has been more helpful for me, is noticing how my life continues to grow around my loss. The pain does not go away, but my life has expanded. Some days I am really connected with my son and my grief, and that is good. Other days I can fully take in an ordinary moment with my daughter and enjoy it. That is good too. 

I have found ways to include our son in our family experiences. I have a candle for him that I light on special and ordinary days. I have a raspberry bush in our backyard that we planted to honour him. These are traditions that my daughter participates in with me. The grief and the love exist together.

3. Grief is not here to make her stronger

What does not kill you makes you stronger. Or so they say. Instead, I would say, the loss makes me a more sensitive, wiser, and its still just me, type of human. Are there gifts and gems from this loss, absolutely. Will it make her a more resilient person. I hope so. It might also make her more tender in some ways. That doesn’t mean that she is doing it wrong. 

4. She does not need to fix this loss for me

It is not her job to comfort me. Or to help me navigate my triggers or sensitivities around this loss. She is allowed to have her own experience and opinions about it. Some days she might want to engage with it and other days she might want to do anything else. That is okay. She will need to find her own way to integrate the loss into her life, and it might not look anything like I expect.

5. This loss is not her fault

It might feel silly to say, because of course the loss is not her fault. But kids internalize a lot of their world and sometimes it can be helpful to remind them that they didn’t cause any of this. Even as an adult, I sometimes find myself rehearsing the past. I wonder if I had made different choices, would he still be here. I think this is my brains way of protecting me. If it can find some fault in my behaviour than I can maybe prevent this from happening again. It is so much more vulnerable to admit that I do not have total control of the outcome of any pregnancy. 

The death of an infant is such a profound and complex type of grief. It’s hard to help another person, never mind my own child, navigate it. Most importantly, I just want her to know that she can always talk to me about it and that we can navigate this together. A part of me wants to protect her from this grief, but I know that is not possible. She was born into a messy world and she was made for the mess. 

Aleah Toews lives in rural Manitoba, Canada where she lives with her husband, daughter and their dog Cronus. She is the author of the children’s book Still Your Heart Will Grow: loving and grieving a pregnancy loss. For more information on the book, you can visit her at www.stillyourheartwillgrow.ca. You can also find her on IG @stillyourheartwillgrow.