Please know that the title is aimed toward grieving parents, but mostly everything written can apply to anyone experiencing grief.

In the months since losing Nathan, so many people have told me “I just don’t know what to say.” I get it. What DO you say to someone who just lost their baby? There are truly no words to make it better, but it is in our nature to try. I have compiled a list of things you can say to a grieving parent as well as some things to not say. Of course this all just my personal opinion and experience, but it is a good starting point.

How to Talk to Grieving Parents:

1. Acknowledge the reality of the situation: it sucks. Parents experiencing stillbirth, infant loss, etc. are literally living every parent’s worst nightmare. It is okay to acknowledge and validate that experience. Losing a baby is terrible. There is no way around it.
2. Ask questions/talk about their baby. In my experience, people will sometimes try to ignore the elephant in the room and talk about literally anything else. Fear of upsetting the grieving parents or just plain discomfort around the topic of death tends to keep the conversation away from the one thing grieving parents really want to talk about: their baby. I (obviously) love talking about Nathan just as much as anyone with living children loves talking about their kids.
3. Sit in silence. Sometimes the best thing to do is just be quietly present. The silence of losing a baby is so loud, but it can be beneficial and therapeutic to just simply let it exist. Trying to fill the silence can be overwhelming and overstimulating to grieving parents. Something I learned in therapy is that we are often afraid (consciously or subconsciously) that if we allow ourselves to sit in the silence and feel the sadness we will get lost in it, but that is usually not the case. The silence is there for a reason. The sadness is there for a reason. Let it be.

How NOT to Talk to Grieving Parents

1. Do not start any sentence with “at least.” Please if you take one thing from reading my blog, let it be this. “At least you can get pregnant,” “at least you are still young,” “at least it was early,” “at least you have other children,” “at least…” Just no. You mean well, I get it. However, the term “at least” is trying to find a bright side when that just doesn’t exist. This comes off as trying to minimize the loss and the grief that accompanies it.
2. Do not say “everything happens for a reason.” Before experiencing stillbirth, the phrase “everything happens for a reason” is how I got through a lot of tough times and closed doors in my life. Telling me that there is a reason for the death of my baby after a fairly uncomplicated pregnancy during which I did everything “right” is honestly infuriating. Sure, maybe this loss serves some greater purpose in the story of my life, but honestly no “reason” will ever be good enough for me to understand why this happened to my baby. In my case (and unfortunately many other stillbirths), there quite literally has been no clear medical reason as to why this happened. So, no, I no longer believe everything happens for a reason.
3. Do not say “I don’t know what I would do if I lost my child.” Honorable mention to “I don’t know how you keep going.” Was I given a choice? There is no guidebook to grieving a child. I don’t know what I’m doing either. It is the most unnatural thing to have to give birth and not take a baby home. Unfortunately, the world keeps spinning even when you feel like falling apart. I still have to clean my house, shower, go to the grocery store, pay bills, and all of the other “normal” things everyone else does. I just feel like I have a giant piece of myself missing.

Death and grief, especially in the case of pregnancy/infant loss, are taboo subjects, but they shouldn’t be. Realistically, everyone will experience loss and grief at some point in their lives. So why is it so hard to talk about? I honestly could go on and on forever about the dos and don’ts, but overall my best advice is just to follow the grieving parent’s lead. If they want to talk, let them talk. If they want to be silent, let them be silent. Do not try to make them feel better about the loss. Validate their feelings and just let them know you are there.
I hope this helps lessen the discomfort around talking to a parent (or anyone) experiencing grief.