Timetables for Grief

Month One

In the first month, you may be so busy with funeral arrangements, visitors, paperwork and other immediate tasks that you have little time to begin the grieving process.  You also may be numb and feel that the loss is unreal.  This shock can last beyond the first month.

Month Three

The three-month point is particularly challenging for many grieving people.  Visitors have gone home, cards and calls have pretty much stopped coming, and most of the numbness has worn off.  Well-meaning friends and family, who don’t understand the grief process, may pressure you to “get back to normal.”  You may be just beginning the very painful task of understanding what this loss really means.

Months Four through Twelve

You continue to work through many tasks of learning to live with loss.  You begin to have more good days than bad days.  Still, even late into the last half of the first year, difficult periods sometimes will crop up with no obvious trigger.  These difficult periods are normal; they are not a setback or lack of progress.

Significant Anniversaries

During the first year, personal and public holidays present additional challenges.  Your baby’s birthday, due date, other family member’s birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and family and other reunions can be painful and difficult.  Medical anniversaries, such as the date of diagnosis, also can bring up memories.  Planning a special activity for the day may be comforting. (source: KCH)

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BIRTH & BEREAVEMENT QUOTES
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She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I am strong.

— January, founder of Birth Without Fear

When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite.

— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
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