The Mothers We Don’t Talk About During World Breastfeeding Week

The Mothers We Don’t Talk About During World Breastfeeding Week As a grief psychotherapist, people often assume my work is about helping people “get over” loss. It isn’t.

My work is about creating a safe space where people can feel everything they have been afraid to say out loud. It is about sitting with them in the silence, in the tears, in the anger, in the questions that have no answers and reminding them that they do not have to carry their grief alone.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of supporting women through some of the most painful experiences imaginable.

I have sat with women navigating infertility after years of hoping for a child. I have supported mothers who experienced recurrent miscarriages and wondered if they would ever become parents. I have walked alongside women who experienced stillbirth, infant loss, and pregnancy complications that ended dreams long before they were ready to let them go.

Some mothers held their babies for only a few hours. Others for a few days or weeks. Some never had the opportunity to hold their babies at all.

As the world marks World Breastfeeding Week, we rightly celebrate mothers who nourish their babies through breastfeeding. But I also think about the mothers whose breastfeeding journey ended before it ever had a chance to begin.

Some watched their bodies produce milk while their babies were no longer here. Some prepared nurseries that remain empty. Some still wonder what their child’s first smile would have looked like. These stories are rarely part of our conversations, yet they deserve just as much compassion.

One of the greatest privileges of being a grief psychotherapist is witnessing hope return. Not because the loss disappears, but because people discover that healing is possible. They learn that grief and love can exist together. They realise they are allowed to smile again without betraying the memory of the child they lost.

Healing is never about forgetting.

It is about learning to carry love, grief, and hope in the same heart.

This World Breastfeeding Week, may we celebrate mothers who breastfeed. But may we also remember the mothers whose journey into motherhood was interrupted by loss.

They are mothers.

Their babies mattered.

Their stories matter.

And they deserve to be seen.