Dealing with Upsetting Questions after Loss

Boundaries

This one question has saved me from countless painful, frustrating, offensive conversations with friends, family and total strangers. So I feel compelled to share it with you now.

Why now?

Because this time of year can force us to be way more social than we may want to be right now and pushes us into all kinds of conversations we don’t really want to have.

We run into more familiar faces at the mall, mingle at more parties, and spend an increased number of hours at our in-law’s kitchen table.  And while there are certainly parts of all that may be lovely, with all that chit chat comes more risk of facing questions like:

  • so how many kids do you have?
  • when are you going to have (more) kids?
  • hey so I heard about your baby….what happened?
  • are you going to try again?

Basically (and at the risk of sounding like a Lord of the Rings character here), I want to offer you a very powerful shield of protection to help you through those moments.

I use this tool all the time in my life and I think it will help you too.

Before responding to any question about my lost little one I first ask myself this:

Is is safe to put my heart and my baby’s memory in this person’s hands, in this place, at this moment?

It’s my twist of Deborah Coreyll’s question: Do I want to have an emotional conversation with this particular person, in this setting, at this time?

In the video below I show you how to apply this in your life.  And while this can’t block every single hurtful comment that comes our way, doing this one thing will definitely spare you from a lot of the extra pain that you don’t need right now.

So from me to you, with love & respect, as we fight each our way through the rest of December, I want to offer you this strategy that I developed and use all the time.

I hope it helps keep your heart & your baby’s memory a little safer.

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  1. I came over to check out your post from the Biz BFF’s post. Really off topic but I just wanted to say how much I really like how your first page allows you to bypass the sign up and go right into the site. That’s something that feels to me like a trustworthy thing to do?
    I know quite a few women who have lost a baby so I will be sharing this on facebook. This must be an incredibly difficult topic for you for you to write about but you are amazing for creating such a beautiful place for others to come and begin to heal as a legacy for your daughter. <3

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