There is a specific kind of silence that happens when you’re holding a screaming toddler in one arm and trying to hide the fact that your heart has just shattered in the other. It’s not the quiet of peace; it’s the quiet of holding your breath, wondering if anyone else can see the crack in your soul beneath the messy hair and stained shirt.

Let's be real for a second. If you are listening to this while navigating the grief of a miscarriage while simultaneously managing the chaos of a toddler, I need you to know that I see you. And I am so sorry. There is no Pinterest board for this. There is no Instagram filter that can soften the jagged edges of losing a baby while you are busy tying shoelaces or wiping apple sauce off a high chair. You are living in two worlds at once. One world is filled with the loud, demanding, beautiful reality of the child who is here. The other world is filled with the ghostly, heavy, silent presence of the child who is not. Trying to hold both of those truths in your chest without collapsing feels impossible some days. Most people think grief is a single event, a wave that crashes and then recedes. But when you have a toddler, grief is a constant companion. It’s there when you look into their eyes and wonder why they got yours. It’s there when you hear a baby cry in the grocery store and your body tenses before your mind even catches up. It’s exhausting to be the anchor for someone else’s joy while you are drowning in your own sorrow. You feel like you’re failing them because you aren’t present enough, and you feel like you’re failing yourself because you can’t stop mourning. This duality is brutal. It asks you to be everything to everyone while giving you nothing back. But please, listen closely: you are not broken for feeling this way. You are human. You are carrying a weight that most people will never understand, and yet, you are still showing up. That is not failure. That is a fierce, quiet kind of courage.

One of the hardest parts of this journey is the guilt that comes with normalcy. You’ll have a day where the sun is shining, your toddler laughs at a silly song, and for ten minutes, you forget to hurt. And then, immediately after those ten minutes, the guilt hits you like a truck. Why did I laugh? Why did I feel happy? Don’t I owe my sadness to the baby I lost? This is the lie our culture tells us about grief. We are taught that we must mourn in straight lines, that we must stay sad until the debt is paid. But life doesn’t work that way. Life is messy and circular. Your toddler needs you to play peek-a-boo right now. They don’t care about the abstract concept of loss; they care about connection. They need your voice, your touch, your presence. When you pull away from them to protect your heart, you aren’t protecting them. You’re isolating yourself further. I remember a day early on when my daughter was dancing around the kitchen, humming off-key. I wanted to join her. I really did. But I felt like I didn’t deserve to enjoy music anymore. So I sat on the floor and cried while she danced alone. Looking back, I wish I had let her pull me up. I wish I had let her share that moment. Because here is the truth: joy does not erase grief. Joy can sit beside grief. You can love your living child fiercely and miss your unborn child deeply at the same time. These feelings are not competitors. They are co-habitants. Allowing yourself to experience moments of lightness isn’t a betrayal of the baby you lost. It’s an act of survival. It’s how you keep going. It’s how you remain soft enough to love again, even when you feel hard as stone.

Then there are the questions. Oh, the questions. Toddlers are blunt instruments of truth. They notice everything. They ask things that pierce through your carefully constructed defenses. Maybe they ask why Mommy is sad. Maybe they ask if the baby in the sky is coming back. Or maybe they just stare at your belly and ask why it’s flat now. Handling these conversations requires a level of honesty that feels terrifying. You want to protect them from the pain, but you also want to honor the reality. There is no perfect script. Some days, the best answer is, "Mommy is sad because I missed a baby, but I have you, and that is what matters." Other days, it’s just sitting with them and saying, "I don’t know how to fix this sadness, but I’m here." You don’t need to explain the biology of miscarriage to a two-year-old. You need to give them emotional language. Teach them that it’s okay to be sad. Teach them that big feelings don’t mean bad things. This is actually a gift, however painful it feels right now. You are modeling emotional resilience for your child. You are showing them that adults break, and that’s okay. That we heal slowly. That we keep loving. When you answer their questions with honesty, you build a bridge between your inner world and theirs. You let them see that you are real. And in a world where they often feel small and powerless, seeing you be vulnerable makes them feel safer too. They learn that sadness is not something to be hidden under a smile. It’s something to be held. It’s something to be shared. You are teaching them that love persists through loss. And that lesson will serve them well long after the initial shock fades.

We talked in a previous episode about the invisibility mothers feel at school drop-offs, but this grief creates a different kind of invisibility. People who haven’t been through this often don’t know what to say. So they say nothing. They avoid eye contact. They change the subject when you mention your child’s name. They fear saying the wrong thing, so they say the least thing. And while that silence might come from kindness, it often feels like abandonment. You start to feel like your grief is a burden, like a dark cloud that ruins everyone else’s sunshine. You stop talking about it. You stop sharing pictures. You become the mom who is always tired, always distracted, always apologizing for being late or missing details. But you are not a burden. Your grief is not a defect. It is a testament to the depth of your love. The challenge is finding your tribe—the people who can sit in the dark with you without trying to turn on the lights. These people might be few. They might be far away. But they exist. And when you find them, you must let them in. You must tell them, "I’m struggling today. I don’t need advice. I just need you to hold space for me." And for the rest of the world, it’s okay to set boundaries. It’s okay to say, "I’m not ready to talk about that yet." It’s okay to decline the invitation to the birthday party where there will be babies. Protecting your energy is not selfish. It is necessary. You are rebuilding your foundation, brick by painful brick. You cannot do it if you are constantly exposed to the elements. Give yourself permission to retreat. Give yourself permission to say no. Give yourself permission to be invisible if that’s what you need to survive the week.

So, how do we move forward? How do we navigate the days when the grief feels heavier than the toddler feels light? We redefine presence. For a long time, I thought being present meant being perfectly attentive, perfectly cheerful, perfectly engaged. But after the loss, presence became something else entirely. Presence became simply being there. It meant sitting on the floor with my daughter even when I wanted to run upstairs. It meant listening to her rambling stories about dinosaurs even though my mind was elsewhere. It meant holding her when she cried, recognizing that her tears mirrored my own unspoken ones. Being present doesn’t require perfection. It requires authenticity. It allows you to say, "Mommy needs a hug right now." It allows you to admit when you’re overwhelmed. It allows you to let your toddler see you cry. In doing so, you teach them empathy. You teach them that love is not just about fun and games. It’s about staying together through the hard stuff. And as you practice this raw, imperfect presence, you will find that the gap between your grief and your joy begins to close. Not because the grief goes away, but because your capacity to hold it expands. You become a larger vessel. You learn to carry the weight without letting it crush you. And in that strength, you find a new kind of freedom. You realize that you are still capable of joy. You realize that your heart can expand to hold both the loss and the love. This is not healing in the traditional sense. This is integration. This is becoming whole again, not by forgetting, but by remembering differently. You are still the mother you were before. You are also the mother you are now. Both are valid. Both are real. And both deserve your compassion.

Finally, I want to talk about small victories. On days when the grief feels insurmountable, victory looks different. Victory is getting out of bed. Victory is feeding your child. Victory is making it to bedtime without breaking down. Victory is looking in the mirror and recognizing the person staring back. Do not underestimate these tiny acts of endurance. They are monumental. They are proof that you are still here. That you are still fighting. That you are still loving. Celebrate them. Acknowledge them. Whisper to yourself, "I did that. I survived another day." Because you did. And tomorrow, you will do it again. But you won’t do it alone. You have this community. You have this podcast. You have me, sitting right here with you, holding your hand across the miles. We are doing our best. We are navigating the un-navigable. And we are finding beauty in the broken places. It’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to laugh. It’s okay to be messy. You are enough, exactly as you are, in all your fractured, beautiful complexity. Keep breathing. Keep loving. Keep going. One step, one hug, one breath at a time. You are seen. You are heard. You are loved. And you are never, ever alone in this.

Take a deep breath with me. In... and out. You’re doing good. I’ll be right here next week. Until then, be gentle with yourself. Love, Ashley.