Hope After Loss: a non-religious book about processing miscarriage grief

Hope After Loss is a book to assist people who have experienced miscarriage as they process their grief. Heidi Inlow read this book in light of both her personal experience with pregnancy loss as well as her professional experience working with the group Support After Abortion. Here is her review:

For me, Hope After Loss is a safe and private place for anyone to be able to begin the healing process from the loss of a child. The book is a great first step to begin processing the emotions from your loss. 

My miscarriage was over 22 years ago, and I never really talked about it. At the time I was active in my church and unmarried, and I felt I couldn’t speak of the pregnancy. Hope After Loss allowed me to process emotions I had locked up for many years. It allowed me to connect some pieces, and realize where I had displaced some of my undealt emotions onto my living children. It allowed me to realize I didn’t become a mom with my first living child, but with the sweet baby I lost many years back. Whether your loss of your child was a week ago or 30 years ago, this book can meet you where you are.

It was helpful and important to me that the book has no discussion of faith. At times Christians and even non-Christians may say things like “God had a plan,” “Don’t worry, you can have more kids,” “Well you were only 6 weeks along,” and even “What do you think you did?” These statements can deny or undermine our actual emotions from the real losses of our children. A child has been lost; emotions and pain will come. This book allowed me a non-religious approach to begin understanding why I was feeling the way I was.  

The only aspect of the book I slightly disagree with is that it was written to be read alone. I personally don’t think a man or woman should journey through the loss of a child alone. If you have experienced the loss of a child and are looking for a first step to to processing your emotions, I recommend this book. It’s not a deep dive, but simply a safe place to share those real raw emotions. But I’d also encourage anyone beginning the book to let someone you trust know you are reading it and let them journey with you.