Pregnancy Loss, Grief, and Healing: Why I Wrote Whole Again After Pregnancy Loss
Loss is not new to me. I heard stories of it long before I ever understood what it meant. My mother spoke about it quietly. Both my sisters experienced it. So did cousins. It was one of those threads that wove itself through the women in my family — present, but rarely spoken about directly.
In my twenties, I had my own experience with reproductive loss. I won’t get into specifics here, because the details aren’t the point — what stayed with me was how private and painful the experience felt, and how little language there was for any of it. I carried that forward into adulthood: the silence, the coping, the ways women make sense of things in our own bodies without ever naming them out loud.
Years later, when I became a mental health nurse and worked more closely with grief and trauma, I began to notice the gap more clearly. Pregnancy loss was everywhere, yet conversations around it were scarce. Women carried miscarriages, stillbirths, terminations, and losses of every kind quietly, often with shame or confusion, often with no validation from the outside world. And inside that silence, partners struggled, families became unsure how to support, and grief took root without language.
At the same time, I knew — clinically and personally — that grief held in the body needs tools, not platitudes. It needs validation, nervous system support, ritual, and a space to say what hurts. I also knew that my background in mental health nursing gave me a way to speak about loss without minimizing the complexity of it.
That’s why I wrote Whole: Navigating the Trauma of Pregnancy Loss in 2022. It wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive medical guide. It wasn’t meant to tell anyone how to grieve. It was meant to offer a compassionate pathway through one of the most private heartbreaks a woman can endure, without pretending that grief is linear, logical, or simple.
The Companion Guide: The Seed of a Larger Vision
What many people don’t know is that the companion journal and affirmation guide actually came first. It was the seed before the full-length book.
At the time, I felt called to create something practical — tools that supported emotional processing, nervous system regulation, and the quiet internal work grief demands. I knew the longer book was coming, and I had already planned that one day the two would be combined. But the companion guide allowed me to:
- offer journal prompts,
- weave in affirmations,
- introduce somatic language,
- and begin supporting women right away.
One reviewer wrote something that stayed with me:
“Nothing can replace the pain felt after losing a loved, no less someone as precious as your own child. This book serves as a space for grieving mothers to feel seen and understood, providing affirmations that brim with the empathy and understanding that these mothers need. The book looks into the needs of grieving mothers through gentle practices and prompts, while helping them to navigate life with adequate support.”
That was exactly my intention. Not overwhelming, not sterile, not textbook — just human, supportive, and accessible.
Behind the scenes, it also allowed me to go through the entire self-publishing process once, so I could repeat it again with confidence. I didn’t know it at the time, but that little journal was the beginning of my entire author journey.
The Integrated Expanded Edition (2026)
My master plan was always to integrate the two — the journal + affirmations with the full text — into one cohesive container. I knew that women navigating loss didn’t need to piece together resources. They needed one place to:
- read,
- reflect,
- write,
- and breathe.
Between 2022 and now, something else shifted in me — something deeper and more personal. As my work expanded into women’s embodiment, somatic healing, and the emotional afterlives of the experiences we carry, I began to see shame everywhere.
Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that threads itself through women’s lives.
Shame around fertility.
Shame around miscarriage.
Shame around stillbirth.
Shame around medical decisions.
Shame around anger.
Shame around not grieving “enough,” or grieving “too much.”
Shame around the expectations placed on the female body.
I didn’t fully grasp this when I wrote the first edition. With time, clinical experience, research, and lived conversations, I realized how deeply shame intertwines with grief — especially reproductive grief. And how both require tenderness, validation, and space rather than silence.
So when I combined the two books into the revised and expanded edition, I wanted the container to be:
- wider,
- softer,
- more honest,
- and more trauma-aware.
My hope is that the integrated edition offers a deeper exploration, not just of grief itself, but of the identities, relationships, and internal narratives that loss can impact.
Below is the author preface from the new edition. I’m including it here because it captures the heart of this work better than anything else I could write today.
Author Preface — Revised & Expanded Edition
Pregnancy loss is one of the most private heartbreaks a woman can endure, yet it lives inside a very public world. If you are holding this book, you may be navigating grief, fear, confusion, numbness, anger, love, or all of these at once. However you arrived here, I am deeply sorry for your loss. Nothing about this journey is simple, and nothing about your feelings is wrong.
When I first wrote Whole in 2022, my intention was to offer a compassionate and grounded pathway through grief — one that honored both the emotional landscape and the quiet, spiritual work of integrating what happened. In this revised and expanded edition, I’ve woven together the original book with the companion journal and affirmation guide I created before anticipating its arrival, so that readers have not only understanding and validation, but also tangible tools to process, release, and rebuild. The heart of this book remains the same; the support within it is now deeper.
Journaling & Affirmations as Tools for Integration
Over the years — both personally and professionally — I have witnessed how difficult it can be to sit with ourselves. Journaling is one of the most accessible practices we have for emotional processing, yet it can feel uncomfortable at first. It asks us to pause, feel, reflect, and witness our inner world without judgment. Research supports what many have known intuitively: expressive writing can reduce anxiety, lower perceived stress, and support mental and emotional resilience. For women and partners who face pregnancy loss, these benefits matter. Isolation is common. Access to care is uneven. Grief often goes unseen.
Free-flow writing, without editing or censoring, can create space for self-awareness and healing. It offers a private portal to name what hurts, what is confusing, what feels unfair, and what is slowly coming back online. The journal prompts in this book exist to guide that process — not perfectly, not every day, but gently and consistently. The goal is not eloquence; it is honesty.
Affirmations are another tool woven throughout these pages. They may feel uncomfortable at first — especially when they challenge deeply held beliefs or the heavy internal narratives grief can create. Affirmations work by interrupting automatic thought patterns and building new mental pathways through repetition, imagery, and emotional association. You are encouraged to experiment, change the wording, adapt them to your voice, and allow them to evolve with time.
There is no right way to journal or to use affirmations — only your way. This book offers structure, prompts, questions, and language to companion you through that process.
What I Have Learned Since Writing This Book
In the years since I wrote the first edition, my work has expanded into women’s embodiment, somatic healing, and the emotional afterlives of the experiences we carry. Pregnancy loss does not exist in a cultural vacuum — it lives at the crossroads of grief, identity, silence, and, for many, shame. I have sat with women who felt ashamed for grieving “too much,” ashamed for not grieving “enough,” ashamed of their bodies, ashamed of their medical decisions, ashamed of their anger, and ashamed of their attempts to move forward. None of that shame belongs to them — yet they carry it.
I did not fully understand, at the time of my first edition, how deeply shame threads itself through women’s lives — especially around fertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and the expectations placed on the female body. With time, research, clinical work, and lived experience, I have come to see how grief and shame often intertwine, and how both require tenderness, space, and validation rather than silence.
My hope is that this revised and expanded edition reflects that understanding. The original voice is intact, but the container around it is wider. It meets loss not only with compassion and spirituality, but with a more honest acknowledgement of the social and emotional pressures women experience around their bodies.
A Final Word Before You Begin
This book is not here to replace professional support, nor does it claim to fix or rush your grief. Instead, it is an offering — a lantern for the darker places, a place to write without judgment, and a reminder that you are not broken, unworthy, or alone. Your bond, your baby, your story, your grief, and your healing matter.
Please move through these pages slowly. Pause when you need to. Skip what doesn’t resonate. Return to what does. If at any point you feel overwhelmed, reach out to someone you trust or seek professional support. You deserve care — not perfection.
Thank you for trusting me to be with you in this delicate part of your journey.
— Heather Dolson
Closing Thoughts
Writing this book changed me. It changed how I see grief, how I see women, how I see the body, and how I see shame. It was the beginning of my self-publishing journey, but more importantly, it was a beginning of speaking openly about things we are taught to keep quiet.
If you are reading this because you have experienced loss, I am deeply sorry. I hope you find language here, or comfort, or validation, or simply a reminder that you are not alone in what you have carried.
The newly revised and expanded edition of Whole Again After Pregnancy Loss is now available in paperback and Kindle format on Amazon. The audiobook version is available on Audible. If it supports you, or someone you love, I would be grateful — and if you feel called to leave a review, it helps other families find resources in a time when they are often overwhelmed and searching in the dark.
Thank you for being here.