The Lonely Vilomah

Love, loss, grief, and picking up the pieces.

Recent Posts

  • Grief Hangovers

    (Written January 4, 2025)

    My relationship with my grief is constantly changing. At first, it was always present at the forefront of my mind; I felt like I was swimming in a stormy, foggy sea, with waves of grief constantly crashing over me and driving me under. Now, it is still continuously present, and occasionally the grief waves come, but it’s like I am sitting on shore, and I can see them coming. It doesn’t mean they don’t impact me, but I feel like now I am able to somewhat prepare myself for their arrival.

    It is the beginning of another new year: 2025. As time drags on, I still feel that disorienting feeling of leaving my daughter behind. Another new year is another reminder that she is not here. My memories of her grow more distant. In some ways, this is merciful, because the pain of those memories is less sharp. But in other ways, I fear leaving her behind.

    I wanted to write today specifically about a phenomenon that I have dubbed the “grief hangover.” It usually happens after a significant anniversary date, such as Maria’s birthday, death day, or certain holidays (e.g. Mother’s Day). I experience grief to some extent on the anniversary date, though as time passes, those experiences of grief seem to be growing less raw. But then afterwards, even if the day itself isn’t as bad as I expected (and I have found consistently over time that it usually isn’t), I find myself surprised by an echo of melancholy that may last for a day, or for several days, or even for a week afterwards. This is the grief hangover.

    I am experiencing this now, as I write this post. I made it through Christmas and New Year’s relatively unscathed this year, even as we reincarnated family-oriented Christmas traditions that used to be the norm for us, but we have not undertaken for various reasons since 2019. I experienced some anticipatory grief surrounding the holidays, but surprisingly, more about my grandparents than my daughter (my grandfather passed away on Christmas Eve several years ago, followed by my grandmother several months later). I even found some joy in the holidays this year, mostly prompted by my living child and my desire to make things special for him. But now that the holidays are over, I find myself in the midst of a somewhat surprising grief hangover.

    We are approaching my daughter’s fourth birthday. I wonder if this grief hangover has less to do with the conclusion of the holidays, and more to do with the upcoming anniversary of my daughter’s birth. Maybe it is less a grief hangover and more a bout of anticipatory grief.

    I find myself studying my grief with more curiosity these days. My new companion in this life. How curious its behavior can sometimes be. It makes its presence known in mysterious and different ways; sometimes loudly, sometimes with a mere whisper.

    It is easy to reflect on my grief in a congenial way while in solitude, but I am still working on existing in the world. It’s so easy to look around me when I’m in a crowded place and think I’m the only one. But I know that is not true. I am still working on internalizing this belief. And I am still learning to walk through this life with my grief.

  • All the Things I Grieve

    The term “secondary loss” was one that I was unfamiliar with until after I lost my daughter. Secondary losses are all of the additional losses that happen as a result of the loss of a loved one, and I have experienced many. Secondary losses are also things to be grieved. Here is a list, which is not all inclusive, of the secondary losses I grieve.

    • I grieve the loss of my former identity.
    • I grieve the loss of my body. (While all women go through changes in their body as a result of pregnancy and childbirth, I spent two years living in my new postpartum body with no living children. It is difficult for me to separate my changed body from my grief journey, even though my body also changed again over the course of my pregnancy with my rainbow baby.)
    • I grieve the loss of my innocence.
    • I grieve the loss of the mother I thought I would be, the mother I can no longer be because I am a mother who knows firsthand loss.
    • I grieve the loss of how I relate to “normal” non-loss mothers.
    • I grieve for my son, because he was born into a loss family. He has inherited many loss-related difficulties (e.g. deciding how to handle sibling day at school).
    • I grieve the losses of friendships. And even friendships that are not lost feel irreversibly changed.
    • I grieve the loss of simplicity in my life. (Like small talk, or how many stockings our family should have for Christmas, or how many names to include on our holiday cards).
    • I grieve the loss of purely joyful holidays.
    • I grieve the loss of the way I used to see the world.
    • I grieve the loss of my certainty in my faith. I still have my faith in God, but it feels different. I grieve the relative simplicity of my prior faith.

    I have experienced many secondary losses, but I have also grown and changed in some areas that I am thankful for. While I lost many things, I found others. I will say I am the most thankful for my newfound understanding of my values, my growing courage to actively seek peace and authenticity, and my ability to care a LOT less about what other people think of me. I love that I don’t feel the need to look perfect every day. I no longer wear make-up, and I have stopped coloring my hair. I have a greater love of my own natural appearance (for example, I love the natural texture of my hair now, whereas before I used to feel compelled to straighten it). I don’t always feel these newfound things, but they are certainly present often. It is an interesting dynamic to actively grieve while simultaneously growing in self-compassion.

  • Deactivating Social Media

    Last week I finally deactivated my Facebook account. This is something I have been considering for a long time, but for some reason couldn’t ever actually pull the trigger.  

    I used to really enjoy Facebook. I enjoyed connecting with people, and I enjoyed sharing photos and life updates. I enjoyed seeing comments on my posts, and I enjoyed responding. I enjoyed the fact that I could effortlessly keep in touch with people from different eras of my life. My relationship with Facebook wasn’t perfect though. For example, I’d see posts sometimes that made me feel left out. Or I would search my friends list to find that someone I liked had “unfriended” me, for reasons unknown. Sometimes I would see photos of someone that I had a more complicated relationship with, and I would feel sad or lonely. But overall, Facebook brought me more enjoyment than it did angst.

    That changed following my daughter’s diagnosis. I had already been posting less in general, feeling a little self-conscious about sharing personal photos and updates with such a wide network of people, many of whom I hadn’t actually spoken to in years. But after Maria’s diagnosis, things got much worse. Previously innocuous updates from former friends and current acquaintances became grief triggers. I began to experience stress about whether or not I should still share news of my pregnancy, given the difficulty and uncertainty of our daughter’s diagnosis. I had originally planned to share our joyous news immediately following our daughter’s anatomy scan. Instead, I found myself processing the immensely difficult news we received while simultaneously trying to figure out if and how I should share it with my online social media network. At the same time, I was seeing others in my network sharing their own happy and seemingly uncomplicated pregnancy announcements. And it wasn’t just the things my friends were sharing… it was also the targeted advertising. Seeing pregnancy and postpartum-related ads was also difficult for me, because I did not know how long my daughter would live, and what her quality of life would truly be like. As our daughter’s due date neared, I decided to announce a break from social media, and proceeded to stay signed off of it for over a year.

    When I did slowly begin to return, I found that the majority of posts I saw were still causing me stress. I also noticed that the type and frequency of content I was seeing had changed. There were a lot more ads, and I was seeing a lot less of my friends’ posts. But even the posts I saw that my friends shared were generally upsetting. Things that I used to find innocuous, or feel ambivalent about, now caused sorrow. It was very hard for me to look at Facebook without being frustrated at how filtered and contrived everything felt.

    Hesitantly, I began sharing things again, but not related to my first pregnancy (or my second), or my loss. That was too much. Unfortunately, this caused yet another challenge for me, because in many ways I felt like a hypocrite. I was frustrated with the filtered feeds I saw others putting forward, but wasn’t I doing the exact same thing?

    I began to follow pages and accounts related to grief and loss. For some time, this helped me feel better. I felt like I was seeing sentiments that I could relate to, and it made my new social media experience feel less one-sided. It took a long time (a few more years), but I recently began realizing that instead of providing validation, seeing loss-related and grief-related content was starting to feel more triggering than helpful. My entire news feed was comprised of grief and loss content, or content from now-acquaintances that caused stress or sadness. Even seeing updates from friends and family became emotionally complicated, in part because I would question if and how I should interact with the posts. Even with my own infrequent posts, I had a hard time finding the emotional energy to respond to comments.

    I realized that the majority of my experience on Facebook had become difficult in some way. Social media is meant to foster connection, but I felt disconnected and anxious. I considered just taking another break, but I really wanted to relieve the pressure I was putting on myself to monitor my profile in some way, even when I wanted a break. Deactivation seemed like the next logical step to take, just to try it.

    It still took me a few days to take the plunge. I did feel some sadness as I clicked the “deactivate” button and answered the questions Facebook asked me about why I was deactivating my account. Ultimately, I decided to say that I was no longer enjoying Facebook and wanted to try taking a break. Thankfully, the sadness I felt when I clicked through the prompts was quickly replaced by relief once I had finished. It has only been about a week, but it’s amazing to me how many artificial stressors I had placed on myself in order to maintain my social media presence. I felt immediate relief after deactivating my account. And even better, now that I am no longer managing my Facebook account, I have more time and mental energy to do other, more meaningful things (like working on this blog!). I feel more authentic and more at peace. I believe that the relationships that matter the most to me won’t disappear just because I’m not on Facebook anymore. Being off social media is helping to quiet the extra noise.

    It’s reversible, but it’s not something I’m in any hurry to reverse. I’m excited to see how my energy and experience of life may continue to shift in the coming weeks as a result of this change. If you’re reading this and considering stepping back from social media, I encourage you to try it! Pick a trial period of time (a week, or even a month) and just see how you feel without it. You can always go back to it if that’s what you decide you want to do.

  • Not Everything Happens for a Reason

    I read an article recently about grief that discussed some common platitudes that grievers often hear, including this one: “Everything happens for a reason.” Since my daughter died, I no longer believe that everything happens for a reason. I know many other bereaved mothers who share this sentiment as well.

    I think there are a few explanations for why people might say things like this to those who are grieving. It’s difficult for people to see someone that they care about hurting, and I think they really want to help. I also think it’s a little bit driven by fear. But mostly, I think it’s about control, even if it is only perceived control. We live in a world where bad things are constantly happening. If we tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason, then, when something horrible happens, we can find some good in it by finding that “reason.” We can use that knowledge to comfort ourselves. To use a less drastic example than death, someone could try to rationalize the end of a romantic relationship by saying that the “reason” it happened was that that person wasn’t the one they were meant to end up with. Even though it hurts now, this break-up will actually lead to greater future happiness.

    If everything happens for a reason, and we can figure out what that reason is, we can have some closure. We can try to make the best of the situation. We can feel a little bit more in control of the uncontrollable. Sometimes we make our best guesses as to what the reason is, and other times we really think we know what that reason must be. And this doesn’t just apply to negative things. We often do this with positive things, too. For example, “This good thing happened to my family because I was blessed by God!” We have no way of actually knowing whether or not this is true. In this way too, we seek control. If we do the right things, if we pray, if we work hard, then good things should happen to us and to our loved ones. And to some extent, this can be true.

    But sometimes we do everything right, and things still go terribly, horribly wrong.

    I really used to believe that everything happened for a reason. And so, reading that article about how unhelpful that platitude actually is for those grieving tremendous losses, and reflecting on my own loss experience, made me wonder (not for the first time) how I could have ever believed such a thing. Why did losing my child change this fundamental belief I once held, and that many other well-meaning people still hold?

    The first thing that comes to mind is the feeling of suffering itself. Imagining something terrible, and actually suffering that something terrible, are two very different things. For example, I knew about the holocaust back when I used to think that everything happened for a reason. How did I rationalize that? What possible reason could there have been for the mass suffering and death that occurred during the holocaust? My distance from that suffering enabled me to still generally believe that “everything happens for a reason.” In an (understandable) attempt to preserve my emotional well-being, I didn’t truly attempt to reconcile the conflicting viewpoints of someone witnessing suffering, and someone actually experiencing suffering. I had the privilege of being able to look the other way. Now I believe that to try to find a “reason” for the holocaust would be to minimize the humanity of those who suffered.

    Let me try to explain this “minimizing humanity” concept in terms of my own experience losing my child. Any time I try to think of a “reason” for what we went through, it feels like I am accepting that my daughter’s life’s purpose was to teach someone or something a lesson. But my daughter, my daughter’s humanity, was so much more than just “to teach someone else a lesson.” Her humanity was beautiful, and consequential, just because she existed. There are a few big problems with her life’s purpose being someone else’s lesson. First, couldn’t that lesson have been learned in a different way, without sacrificing my daughter’s health, and ultimately, her life? Second, if people’s lives are significant only as lessons for others, are we saying some people are more important, or worthy of living, than others? Why one person, and not another? Why does one child have to die, while another child gets to live? Isn’t all human life sacred? Third, I cannot reconcile this minimalization of her life’s value with my own personal experience of suffering. I suffered greatly then, and I continue to suffer now as I grieve. Having personally experienced prolonged suffering makes it really hard to think of that suffering as merely a lesson for others.

    I have heard people talk about making meaning from tragedy. They say things like, “It’s not the tragedy that has meaning, it’s what you do because of the tragedy that has meaning.” This still, to me, seems like a way to seek control over the uncontrollable. Maybe this will change with time, but it has been over three years now, and I still feel a very strong urge, bordering on a need, to keep my own “meaning-making” separate and distinct from my daughter’s life and purpose. Do I want to do something with my life in her honor? Yes. Do I believe that the reason for her diagnosis and resulting death is whatever good thing or things I do in her honor? No. Do I believe that the good things I do in her honor make any of the terrible things that happened to her, and to my family, ok? Absolutely not.

    If there was a reason for my daughter’s health issues, the issues that did not allow her body to sustain her own life, then I don’t know what it could possibly be. And I cannot understand how a just and merciful God could have a “reason” for the kind of suffering and loss that accompanies death. Or, if God intervenes, how He chooses where and when to intervene. Why He would spare the lives of some children, and some babies, but not others. Rationally, I understand why a just and merciful God allows suffering in order to preserve free will. I also understand that God is capable of bringing about good from even the most evil of occurrences. But I have a really difficult time believing that our good, just, merciful God would include these terrible occurrences in His “plan.”

    Even if God had a reason to intervene or not intervene with a particular circumstance, we have no way of knowing what that reason could possibly be. To assume we knew would be akin to playing God ourselves. And regardless, it’s certainly not helpful for us humans to go around telling those of us who have suffered horrific, “unimaginable” losses that “everything happens for a reason.” Or that “God’s Plan” will bring about some other kind of good that will make our loss “worth it.”

    I am a bereaved mother. There is no future greater good that I could possibly find in my life that would make losing my daughter “worth it.” I may reach a point in my life where I can truly embrace good things in my future, or lessons I have learned as a result of my grief, but they will never be worth as much as my daughter’s health and life.

    Not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes we do everything right, and terrible things still happen. Terrible things that will never be ok. Sitting with each other in our suffering, being empathetic and present, without trying to understand the “reason,” is the best thing we could possibly do.

  • Who Knew

    I was in the kitchen cooking earlier today when the song “Who Knew” by P!nk started playing on my Pandora station. I have loved that song since it was first released, but it had been a long time since I had heard it. I had always thought it was about the ending of a serious long-term relationship, like breaking off an engagement. I never knew that it was actually about the death of a loved one.

    There I was, in my kitchen, singing along to a song I already knew by heart. As the verses continued, I found myself just listening instead of singing. By the end, I was crying.

    “If someone said three years from now
    You’d be long gone
    I’d stand up and punch them out
    ‘Cause they’re all wrong and
    That last kiss, I’ll cherish until we meet again
    And time makes it harder, I wish I could remember
    But I keep your memory, you visit me in my sleep
    My darling, who knew?”

    The way she describes the memory of her loved one in the final refrain at the end is what really made it sink in for me. Since my daughter died, I live that every day. Time does make it harder. I do wish I could remember. Really, actually remember. The more time passes, the more my memories blur. People around me move on with their lives like my daughter never existed. It makes me so glad that I have pictures of her from when she was alive, because those, along with my blurry memories, are all I can ever have of her now.

    That song makes me think back to when I was pregnant. Back when I thought we were far enough along to be “safe.” Back before we found out anything was wrong. When I thought she was ok. If someone had told me then that in a few short years she would be “long gone,” it would have broken my heart.

    Who knew.

  • Grieving My Non-Loss Motherhood

    I have written before about secondary losses. One of those losses that has been hitting me really hard lately is the loss of the mother I used to think I could, and would, be.


    I feel a lot of anxiety as a mother, and while I expected to feel some anxiety, I believe my higher-than-expected level of anxiety stems from my experience with loss. Loss is no longer “something that happens to someone else,” because it has happened to me. That is a fact, and it is one that will never change. That experience and that intimate knowledge of loss has changed me as a mother. First, I was the mother of a child with severe special needs. Then, after my daughter died, I became a mother with no living children. I next had to come to terms with yet another idea of my motherhood: the fact that I may never get to parent a healthy, living child. Now that I am a mother to a healthy, living child, I am having to come to terms with the fact that how I parent my living child is forever colored by my previous experience with loss.


    Our experiences shape us into the people we are. They influence how we perceive others, and how we perceive our environments. I have known this about myself in the past, and I have seen how my experiences shaped my outlook, my actions, and my relationships. The difference with this loss experience is that it has cleaved my life into “before,” and “after.” Other experiences, even other trials, have not had such a profound impact on me in such a short period of time. I have witnessed myself change, and adapt, and come out the other side of other previous experiences, but never have I felt as disjointed as I do now. I always viewed traversing my pre-loss challenges as a part of a whole picture of my ever-evolving self. I don’t know if I would have ever considered stopping to grieve a future version of me that would no longer exist because of a challenge I experienced.


    This feels like more than just a challenge in my life. This feels like an entirely different timeline.


    I have written before that I mourn missed milestones for my daughter as if she were healthy. That is my other timeline. That is the other trajectory my life could have taken, the one that I used to expect. That version of myself, that version of my motherhood, is what I grieve.


    This current version of my motherhood? It is anxiety-ridden, and full of fear. It borders the “helicopter parenting” style that I swore I hated. It often feels involuntary. It is not a picture of myself that I really like seeing, and yet it has somehow become my reality.


    I have empathy for this person I am, yes. But I also grieve the person I thought I would be instead. I am working very hard to shape the few parts of my life that are actually within my control, and there are also many parts of my life that are beautiful as they are now. I also believe that there are beautiful things in my future. But that doesn’t change my grief. My grief is my companion now, and in my new future. My grief is my forever companion in this new reality.


    One of the reasons I started this blog is because I wanted to be able to record snapshots of my grief at different moments in time. This is what my grief looks and feels like three years after my daughter’s death. I expect that I will continue to grow and evolve as a person and as a mother. It will be interesting to see how my identity as a mother will continue to change and evolve over time. I wonder if, years from now, I will continue to grieve my motherhood identity in the same way.

  • The Complexity of a Rainbow

    This morning while out on my morning run, I saw a rainbow!

    I was really very fortunate with the timing of my run. It was pouring down rain before I left, and it is pouring down rain now as I sit writing this blog post. But there was a break in the rain for the entire duration of my run, and I got to run in the sunshine. The usually crowded path was almost completely empty due to the recency of the rain. As a result, my run offered a chance for some peaceful reflection.

    Many loss mothers use the term “rainbow baby” to describe a baby conceived after loss. The way I understand it, the term is meant to indicate the calm or beauty after a storm, and for this reason, not all loss mothers embrace or use the term, because they don’t like to think of their deceased baby as a “storm.” I myself used the term during my pregnancy with my son simply because it made my life easier, not because I felt like I really related to it on a deep level. It’s a fairly well-known term, and so I was able to convey the complexity of my pregnancy experience in a very easy-to-understand way (usually with strangers, medical providers, etc). “This is a rainbow baby.”

    But since the birth of my son, I have come to view rainbows themselves differently. To say that a rainbow represents the calm after the storm is far too simplistic; this has not been my experience at all.

    In my day-to-day experiences (and as a result, in my writings) I keep coming back to the idea that life after loss is a constant co-mingling of joy and sorrow. Even the most joyful moments with my son bring thoughts of what I am missing out on with my daughter. I know my daughter more fully because I know my son, and this is both beautiful and heartbreakingly difficult. I am and will always be a mother to both of my children.

    A rainbow, to me, now represents the coexistence of joy and sorrow. You need the existence of both sunshine and rain to see a rainbow. Joy, and sorrow. Because of this new understanding, I now find great comfort in seeing rainbows. They don’t heal my pain, but they do bring comfort. They bear witness to the complexity of my grief.

    The rainbow doesn’t represent the absence of, or the aftermath of, sorrow: it exists with it and because of it.

    I also believe that joy does not have to come in the form of a living child. Joy can also come from living a life full of intention and meaning, in alignment with one’s values. Joy can come from connection and relationships with others who truly understand our hearts. Joy can come from spirituality, from peace, from authenticity.

    Joy and sorrow together have the potential to unlock a beauty that otherwise could not exist.

  • Please Stop Asking

    Unless you really want to know the answer, that is.

    Please stop asking, “Is this your first?”

    I think that the majority of people have probably heard the commonly cited statistic that about 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss. And yet, somehow, “Is this your first child?” remains an acceptable go-to question for small talk with everyone from casual acquaintances to random strangers.

    Shortly before Christmas, when I was about 38 weeks pregnant with my son, a kind elderly woman engaged me in small talk. Less than a minute into our conversation, she gestured towards my uncomfortably large stomach and asked me, “Is this your first?” I smiled through my heartache and gave my long-practiced answer: “Yes and no; it’s complicated.” Because you see, I got this question constantly. All. The. Time. Constant little jabs to my heart. I heard this question so many times that I quickly discovered I needed to have a pre-rehearsed answer. A pre-rehearsed answer that kept the asking party as comfortable as possible, while allowing me to be true to my story. That no, he is not my first. But yes, he is currently healthy, and should he survive labor and delivery, he will be my first living child. My beloved daughter was not healthy; she had congenital developmental problems that were discovered at the anatomy scan halfway through my pregnancy, and even though I still chose to carry her to full term, she only lived for 3 months and 4 days.

    Yes and no. It’s complicated.

    But unfortunately, this woman kept pressing. I don’t think she meant any harm by it, but she continued asking questions. Most people, when I gave this answer, either graciously changed the subject, or ended the conversation all together. Both responses were completely fine with me. Both responses allowed us to maintain our dignity and move on with our respective days. This woman, however, didn’t understand what I was trying to communicate, and kept asking questions. Did I have a child in school? Living somewhere else? After a few more unsuccessful attempts to deflect, I finally said that I had a daughter who died a few years ago when she was three months old. The woman looked horrified, and immediately stopped talking to me. (I’m sorry the events of my life are so horrifying to you. Honestly, they’re horrifying to me, too. Babies aren’t supposed to die, after all.)

    Don’t ask. Don’t ask, unless you really want to know the answer.

    A few days ago, I was on the phone with a customer service representative, on a “recorded line for training and quality assurance purposes.” He could hear my young son making noise in the background during our conversation, and he shared with me that he had a young child as well. I was mentally applauding myself for sounding so “normal” during this conversation while the two of us spoke about our young children (this can be tough for a bereaved mother), when suddenly came the question, “Is he your first?” Immediately, I thought, Oh great, now I must either make this nice person feel terrible (and on a recorded line no less, where this dialogue may then become the subject of future HR training), or I must lie. I had a split second to decide before things would get awkward. And I lied. I lied, and said, “Yes, he is.” The conversation continued on.

    This was a few days ago, and I am still dealing with the emotional repercussions of this conversation. For some reason, this one hit me particularly hard. Three years after my daughter’s death, I denied her existence, yet again, to make someone else feel comfortable. To him, the conversation was small talk, and he has almost certainly already forgotten about it. I have no doubt that he did not intend to cause any hurt by his question. But oh, that question hurt. I have learned on my grief journey that the intent of something, and the impact it has, are not the same. Just because someone didn’t intend to hurt me doesn’t mean that I wasn’t hurt. Both things can be true. I am grieving, and I am allowed to feel my feelings. 

    This insidious question has many variants.

    “How many kids do you have?”

    “You’re [insert age], why don’t you have any kids yet? When are you going to start trying?”

    “Oh, you have [insert number] of [insert gender], didn’t you want to try for a [insert opposite gender]?”

    That is why I’m writing this. Maybe you are one of the 3 in 4 who have never experienced pregnancy or infant loss, and you may not know how painful this question can be to those who have. Or maybe you have an idea, but you have never encountered an unfiltered response from a bereaved mother or father, and so you may not know the extent of the impact. Maybe you know the statistics, but have never thought beyond, “Oh, how sad.”  I get it. I understand. I used to be that person who didn’t know. I truly didn’t know.

    Let my situation now help you to understand.

    If you don’t truly want to know the answer, then please stop asking.