Grief and Motherhood

Mother's Group

Recently, as a guest presenter at a mother's group, we created space for something truly tender.

I had the privilege of leading these beautiful mothers to explore ambiguous loss — the kind that shows up in motherhood in unexpected ways. And what unfolded was nothing short of sacred.

The Grief We Don't Name

Motherhood arrives carrying so many stories we never expected to write. We spoke about birth stories that didn't unfold as we'd dreamed, IVF journeys marked by hope and heartbreak, relationships that shifted in ways we couldn't predict, and the quiet, persistent grief of letting go of what we thought it would be like.

This is ambiguous loss — grief without a clear endpoint, mourning something that was never quite there but still feels profoundly absent. In motherhood, this shows up everywhere if we're brave enough to look.

There's grief in the birth that didn't go to plan. In the breastfeeding journey that never began or ended too soon. In the partner who became a stranger in the fourth trimester. In the friendships that couldn't stretch to hold your new reality. In the career that feels like it belongs to someone else now.

Like the coral reef image I choose to represent grief on my website — messy, chaotic, demanding to be witnessed, yet also raw and beautiful and bursting at the seams — motherhood grief is complex and ever-changing. The longer you observe it, the more it reveals.

The Weight of Only One

We shared how it feels when you only have one child — the pressure to savour everything, to soak it all in, to not miss a single moment. And how heavy that can feel sometimes.

"This is it," whispers the voice in your head as your toddler has a meltdown in the supermarket. "This is your only chance to experience this stage." The weight of that realisation — that there won't be another baby to do it differently with, another chance to get it right — can feel crushing.

Every milestone becomes loaded with finality. The last time they fit in that onesie. The last time they need you to read them to sleep. The last time they believe in magic with complete certainty. When you know it's the last time for everything, the pressure to be present, to be grateful, to be enough, can become overwhelming.

We talked about how this awareness can rob joy from the moment even as it's supposed to enhance it. How the instruction to "enjoy every moment" can feel less like permission and more like another impossible standard we're failing to meet.

The Quiet Losses

We talked about the sadness of packing away baby clothes. Such a small act, yet it contains multitudes.

Each tiny outfit holds a memory, a moment frozen in cotton and snaps and impossibly small sleeves. That onesie they wore home from the hospital. The dress that made them look like a little angel, but gave them a rash. The pyjamas they wore during their first fever when you were sure you were doing everything wrong.

Folding them away feels like closing chapters you're not ready to finish. It's grief for a baby who no longer exists, even though the child they've become is right there asking for a snack. It's mourning the version of yourself who was their whole world, before they learned to say "no" and mean it.

Identity in the In-Between

The identity shifts of motherhood are seismic and ongoing. We become mothers, but we're still ourselves — except we're not quite the same selves anymore, and we're not quite sure who we're becoming.

There's grief for the woman who could leave the house without checking if she'd packed seventeen different emergency items. For the person who made decisions based on what she wanted, not what would work around nap schedules and dietary restrictions, and meltdown prevention strategies.

There's grief for the simplicity of pre-motherhood relationships, where conversations could meander and thoughts could be finished. For the luxury of boredom, of spontaneity, of silence that wasn't filled with the mental load of someone else's needs.

And yet, there's also grief for how completely this new identity can eclipse everything else. "I'm just a mum now," someone shared, the weight of "just" carrying so much loss — loss of professional recognition, creative expression, intellectual stimulation, adult conversation.

The Loneliness of Never Being Alone

We explored the loneliness that can come even when you're never alone. Perhaps especially when you're never alone.

It's the loneliness of being constantly needed but not necessarily seen. Of having your days filled with care for someone else while your own needs become background noise. Of being surrounded by other mothers at playgroups and swimming lessons and birthday parties, but feeling like you're performing motherhood rather than living it.

It's the isolation that comes from having experiences that feel too raw, too complicated, too ungrateful to share. Who wants to hear about how overwhelming it is to be loved so completely by someone so small? How suffocating it can feel to be someone's everything? How guilty you feel for wanting space from the person you love most in the world?

Coming Together as a Group

The Beauty of Being Witnessed

And through it all, this beautiful group of mothers opened their hearts. They listened, cried, laughed, gave advice, and held each other.

No one tried to fix anything. We just made space to be.

This is what grief needs most — not solutions, but witnessing. Not advice, but presence. Not fixing, but feeling alongside.

When we create space for the complexity of motherhood — the joy and the grief, the love and the loss, the fulfilment and the emptiness that can all exist simultaneously — we offer each other something precious: permission to be human.

Moving Forward, Not Moving On

Grief isn't something we overcome or get over. Like that coral reef, it's constantly evolving, revealing new aspects the longer we spend with it. Our relationship with it transforms, but it doesn't disappear.

The grief of motherhood isn't a problem to solve but a territory to navigate with compassion and courage. It's not a sign that we're ungrateful or inadequate, but evidence that we're human beings having a profoundly transformative experience.

In recognising and naming these losses — the small ones and the sweeping ones, the obvious ones and the ambiguous ones — we create space not just for grief but for healing. Not healing that eliminates the pain, but healing that integrates it, that lets it become part of our story without defining our entire narrative.

Because here's what I know from years of sitting with grief: when we make space for what is difficult, we also make space for what is beautiful. When we acknowledge the losses inherent in becoming mothers, we can also celebrate the profound gifts that come with this territory.

Watching these mothers hold space for each other's tender truths, I was reminded that grief shared is grief transformed. Not erased, but alchemised into something that connects us rather than isolates us.

In the end, that might be the greatest gift we can offer each other: the radical act of witnessing without fixing, holding without healing, and loving without requiring anyone to be anything other than exactly where they are.

If you're navigating your own experiences of ambiguous loss in motherhood or any other area of life, know that your grief deserves space and witnessing. Grief is messy, chaotic, and demands to be witnessed — but it is also raw and beautiful and bursting at the seams.

It is love and it is life.