A Journey Through Grief After Stillbirth
Is it possible to heal grief? I believe it is. We don’t just have to cope with it. But healing grief — first setting the intention to heal — takes us on a whole new journey, one where our understanding of life shifts completely. It’s an exercise in detachment and love, simultaneously.
Find the Book
I was 37 when it happened. Val Peter — Val meaning "wave" in Slovenian, Peter after his paternal grandfather — was our first child. After his death, I was yearning for spiritual guidance, as one yearns for water to live. Healing the Well is my personal account — the aftermath of stillbirth, and the spiritual journey it became.
The I Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle, became my unexpected spiritual companion in grief. But what is expected after stillbirth? I knew the I Ching from before, but I didn't quite understand it. After my son was stillborn, something shifted in me. It was as if a veil had lifted, allowing me to drink from its wisdom, if only from time to time. Sometimes I still wouldn't understand the answers — sad, angry, disappointed — but I would save those and return to them months later. Among them was the answer about the well, which gave the book its name.
When I say something shifted in me, I really mean shifted. I remember looking at children in the mall just after we'd spent the night at the hospital, after our son was stillborn. I needed to buy a tight sports bra, to stop the glands from producing milk, and it was as if every child was gleaming — I thought, what a miracle life is. I don't remember the drive home. I stared through the window at the beautiful green landscape of rolling hills, and for 45 minutes my mind went somewhere else. I don't remember where. I was aware again only once we arrived home.
Trapped between the reality back at home — the empty baby car seat, the knitted baby socks that will never be worn, the crib my mom was still decorating, brought down to the basement, the unread copy of The Little Prince my brother had bought me during my pregnancy to read to Val one day, the unplayed songs my husband was going to play him as his first music excursions in grunge and classical music ...— and the space where my mind had gone on that drive. And in that space, my mind was okay.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,
the master calls a butterfly.
— Richard Bach
Although everyone's experience is unique, we share the same pain.
When my sister-in-law explained to my then five-year-old niece what happened on March 8, 2024, she told her that my husband and I had lost our baby. My niece replied, "They didn't lose him. He died." We were in awe—we grasped the wisdom in the child's words.
If you're reading this book because your child has died, please accept my deepest condolences. I want you to know that just as we haven't lost our boy—he's still with us—you haven't lost your child. They're still with you.
When I first started writing this book, I wasn't aware of the journey the words would take me on. I didn't know that this book wouldn't be about the loss of our children, but about how we keep them. And we keep them by letting them go.
On my journey to recover from the pain that was unimaginable and felt impossible to heal, I traveled with the I Ching (Yijing), known as the Book of Changes. One of the oldest books in the world, it became my spiritual companion. You might wonder why I didn't choose religion. While that is a path for some, I didn't feel that call. I felt compelled from within to connect with my deepest self, unencumbered by any religion—a connection made possible through the ancient Chinese oracle.
I know that you're hurting. I also know that not everything is as it seems to the mind. If I could say only one thing to ease your pain, I'd say this: let go of any doubt that you're a parent to your baby. You are. You will experience your child, and your love for them, in a different way.
This is a deeply spiritual, transformative time. I know you sense it, and it's okay to open to that sense that, from time to time, tells you it's going to be okay. That everything, for some strange reason you can't fully fathom, is okay.
I wish it weren't so hard for us to see and understand this. But it is. We have to go through the darkness, through the suffering, to reach the light.
In the first weeks after his death, I listened to a podcast about grief. A counselor gave advice on how to express condolences and suggested avoiding platitudes. Personally, I'm not so sure. When a wonderful woman wrote to me, "The soul never dies," it brought me great comfort. My whole being lightened. The counselor also shared a story about a well-wisher who mistyped and sent "Heaven's got another angle" instead of, you know…
Hearing the typo blew my mind. It was the most beautiful insight, and I felt as if Heaven itself had typed that condolence message.
We can allow for a larger picture. We don't need to understand it, just allow for it. We can allow the possibility that Heaven, or simply Life, holds another angle, and that it isn't necessarily the desperately painful one our mind is painting. Allowing for a larger picture begins to teach the mind to disentangle from its own stories.
If we're religious, we might find this different angle in religion. If we aren't, we can still allow for it and lift ourselves from the burden of our own explanation.
We can lay down the burden that we know best, that we know how life should be. There are many shoulds, but they don't work in life. Life is flowing. Even in this, what feels like a standstill, our inner life is growing stronger. We can allow life to have its own way and to hold a wider angle than what the mind can perceive.
I hesitate to use the word ego, because it has been condemned so much. In fact, it doesn't need to be condemned; it needs to be understood and guided—but ego is the one who is clinging to shoulds.
We all have a self that is capable of transcending shoulds. Even the most painful ones.
Soon, I began to sense the direction my life wanted to flow. It was different from the one I had planned. It was painful to admit it, painful to follow it, because it meant continuing my life without my child. It meant giving this life, a life without him, a chance. I felt torn between the two worlds.
Belongs to the adult, letting go of the child.
By following one gains what one seeks.
It’s fruitful to remain persevering. (Following 17.3 to 49 Radical Change)
The flow of life begins to pull us further and further from the life we had imagined sharing with our child, from the life we had planned and hoped for. This can be a painful process, and we may resist it because we don’t want to lose our connection to the child. What we may not realize is that we aren’t severing our connection to the child, but rather letting go of the version of ourselves and the life we had planned. When we let go of the life we were going to have, we allow life to unfold in a new way.
We must be willing to let go of the life we had planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us. — Joseph Campbell
We can give ourselves permission to walk this path, gradually letting go of sorrow and stepping into a new life. It doesn’t mean we’ve stopped loving our child—it means we’ve chosen to also love ourselves and the new version of us that is now coming to life. We have to give this new version of ourselves a fair chance to live.
It’s a challenge or, if you will, a lesson in maturity, in growing up. At times, it literally felt like I was going through a second puberty. The world I knew before was gone. People and relationships were no longer the same for me. I was no longer the same to myself. It felt as if my brain were rewiring. As in puberty, we’re asked to embrace this growth. To change. To participate in the world differently.
There’s a transformative force in the grief we feel. It compels us to become different—bigger, in a sense—than we were before. The emerging version of ourselves truly is bigger, as it holds the one who was so deeply hurt, but now we’re growing into the one who is healing. As if lovingly hugging our wounded self.
When we take this new path, we accept our sorrow. We show compassion for our former self, who has been through so much, but we avoid tying our identity solely to it. We invite our former self to join us on this journey, but we, the bigger version of ourselves, now take the lead.
On this path, we learn to take care of ourselves. On this path, we are adults in practical ways: we show up for ourselves, speak up for ourselves, take care of our physical needs, set boundaries when others cross them, and ask for help and support when we need it. And every time we stumble or fall, we pick ourselves up with compassion. We’ve changed through this experience—we've grown up. We follow that self.
As painful as taking this path of growth was, I chose to follow it. I knew what I was seeking—peace within myself. I longed for my mind to find peace.
In memory there is pain, in pain there is healing, in healing there is truth, in truth there is hope, in hope there is eternity, in eternity there is love.
If you feel inspired to walk with the I Ching yourself, here are the trusted online resources that guided me on my healing journey.
A thoughtful and accessible guide to the ancient Chinese oracle by Hilary Barrett. For detailed line interpretations, see her book I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future.
An intuitive and richly symbolic exploration of the Book of Changes, created by Dutch I Ching expert LiSe (Lotti Voute).
A nature-inspired interpretation of the I Ching by dream analyst and Taoist scholar Kari Hohne. Also published as a book: The Essential I Ching: 64 Degrees of Nature's Wisdom.
Available in ebook and paperback.
I'd love to hear from you. Please note that I'm an author, not a therapist, and am unable to offer professional support. But if you'd like to share your story or simply say hello, you're welcome to write to me.
healingthewell@gmail.com