UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Hello friends. My name is Tami Simon and I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
I also want to take a moment and introduce you to the Sounds True Foundation, our nonprofit that creates equitable access to transformational tools and teachings. You can learn more at soundstruefoundation.org. And in advance, thank you for your support.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Eileen Santos Rosete. Eileen is a postpartum doula, a trauma-informed yoga teacher, a grief educator, and a womb loss survivor. She specializes in grief and postpartum care for survivors of pregnancy and loss. Eileen holds a master of science, marriage and family therapy degree from Northwestern University and is certified as a DONA Doulas of North America International Postpartum Doula. Her brand, Our Sacred Women, is known for its elevated offerings that help women feel seen, held, and honored. She’s especially passionate about supporting all who give birth and are postpartum both after live births and after loss. She’s the author of a new and deeply loving book. I have to say, I think it’s the most gentle, caring, feels like a salve when you read it. That’s how it felt to me. Her book is called To Tend and To Hold: Honoring Our Bodies, Our Needs, and Our Grief through Pregnancy and Infant Loss. Eileen, welcome.
Eileen Santos Rosete: Thank you Tami. It’s an honor to be here.
TS: It’s an honor to be with you. You poured so much love and care and heart into To Tend and To Hold, and I know the book just arrived on your doorstep, finished complete fresh off the presses just yesterday evening.
ER: It did and I stayed up for two hours. I didn’t know that that much time had passed Tami, but two hours later because I just couldn’t put it down. It’s just such a moment.
TS: It is. In a way, it’s your book baby.
ER: It really is. And Haven, my editor there at Sounds True was wifeing me this whole way. Couldn’t be here without her.
TS: Tell us a little bit as a way to get to know you a little bit and to give people some sense of the inside story of how you came to write To Tend and To Hold. What inspired you to do so?
ER: Yeah, so I experienced two early pregnancy losses after giving birth to my first living child, and what really stands out is this memory from the first experience of pregnancy loss where I was sitting on the toilet having contractions. I didn’t know I was going to have contractions. My doctor had told me I would feel cramping, I would be bleeding. But Tami, I was on the toilet and I thought, and can I cuss here?
TS: You can be free. Be free. Okay.
ER: I thought, oh shit, I’m laboring right now because I had given birth already to my first living child. So I knew what was happening. I mean I didn’t know in advance, but in the moment it just dawned on me that I am going through what I went through with my first pregnancy and laboring and birthing and it astounded me that I didn’t realize that I would be giving birth. It seems so obvious when you’re in the moment or after the fact, but I think for many people that comes as a surprise and there are many reasons why I came to this moment to be with you with this book. That’s one of the main moments that really spurred me to want to create something that can help others feel more prepared.
And after my experiences of pregnancy loss, I had this vision come to me that I write about in the book in this vision I saw a group of women, it was nighttime, very dark, but a group of women standing around a small body of water like a pond in nature. And they were standing just closely together some arm in arm and they were looking down at the water at candles floating. And I knew intuitively that they were there to honor the pregnancies that had ended in loss, but also to honor themselves. And from that I began to long for that to actually happen in real life, a moment to honor not just the losses Tami, but that these losses happen in our bodies or in the case of infant loss, the loss happened after the birth, but still so intimately tied to your body. What other death is there or losses is there that so embodied that way?
So I began hosting these dining events in Los Angeles that I called our womb loss, and it was meant to be a time to gather those who experience this type of loss with their bodies and to honor them when so much that is out there about the topic really focuses on the pregnancy that ended or the baby that died. It’s like where are we in this conversation? And in hosting those dinners and seeing just the profound softening that my guests felt, I knew I wanted to try to capture the essence of those gatherings in a way that I could share it more widely with the world. And at one of these dinners, the very last one I hosted before the Pandemic, I said that out loud at the table because usually we would do short introductions like your name, what drew you to be there tonight that night. And when it was my turn, I shared this seed that was planted in me that I want to capture what we’re feeling right now in a book. And I spoke it. And Tami, it’s here.
TS: In to tend to hold, you make the point again and again how people who have suffered pregnancy loss, womb loss are not alone. And of course the statistics are staggering actually in terms of the number of women who have gone through some type of womb loss, pregnancy loss, infant loss. And I’m curious, given these profound number of people who have gone through an experience like this from your perspective, why it still feels like something we don’t want to talk about, we want to avoid, that feels taboo even and has a sort of stigma to it. I noticed in approaching this conversation, I was like, wow, we’re going into territory that is not usually spoken about in just an open and transparent way the way you do in the book and the way we’re going to talk about it in this conversation and what your view is of that.
ER: I think it’s many things. I do touch on gender in the book. I think a big part for those who are pregnant, identify as women, this sense that we grew up with, at least here in America, not being an inconvenience, not taking up too much room. I think that the way we’re socialized based on our gender plays in and so we may be reluctant to share the news with others for fear of being a burden. And also countless women that I’ve talked to who have experienced womb loss, they have told me, and it mirrors my own experience, that it’s hard. It’s hard to name what we’re feeling and to name what we’re needing to ask for help. I think it’s part of it though, I have to say in the last handful of years since writing my book proposal and finding a home at sounds True, things are changing, especially with social media.
You have more people sharing very openly about their fertility struggles, about their different forms of loss. So I have a lot of hope. And what’s unique about my book too, Tami, is it’s really the first that I know of that honors that we too are postpartum after pregnancy and infant loss. Postpartum simply means after birth. And for anyone who has been pregnant, that pregnancy will eventually have to end at some point in some way. Your body will release that pregnancy in some way and then you’ll be in the postpartum period. It’s a time of great shifts physically and mentally, emotionally, relationally, even when you’re returning to a non-pregnant state. I say returning, but you can never be fully who you were before a pregnancy, before the pregnancy. You’re forever changed.
TS: What changes when you have an understanding that a woman who’s had a miscarriage, and I realize now you use the term womb loss, not miscarriage, so I think we should talk about that, but a woman who has a miscarriage is in fact postpartum. That’s one of the points in your book. And I’m trying to understand how does that change things When you see it that way, it seems it really does change things quite a lot.
ER: Yeah, I think it’s a tremendous truth that needs to be more known in the world. Often when I share that piece with postpartum doula clients of mine or people I meet, there’s usually a pause, a very pregnant pause if you’ll as they realize, oh yeah, that’s right, I was pregnant, I’m not pregnant now that means I’m postpartum. It’s important because as there’s more resources and awareness in America at least of the post-birth time, the postpartum time being one that needs more attention, that people who are postpartum need more support. It can help survivors of pregnancy and infant loss or womb loss have some kind of a roadmap. So there’s no strong cultural guidelines in our society for what to do when you are experiencing pregnancy and infant loss. So to understand that you’re also postpartum can be helpful. You can think, okay, I’m postpartum. Here are many books on the shelves now about what the postpartum time. I also need what other people who give birth need, which is nourishing food, healing, touch, bereavement, leave time away from work if possible, paid protected time, community support, it just when someone goes through pregnancy, infant loss.
It’s just unfortunately so common for people to not even think that they should take time off work. And even if your loss occurred in the first trimester very early on, you weren’t visibly showing, your body’s still going through so many shifts and it needs time to rest. It needs time to heal. So my hope in making that point, Tami, is to spur our culture to create those guidelines so that when someone hears of someone else experienced such a loss, they have ideas come to them of what they can do to support them, to support them. In a way we more or less automatically know how to support people enduring other forms of death to support people who are postpartum. And to also affirm for survivors of womb loss that what you’ve gone through is tremendous and you deserve to feel held and cared for.
TS: Eileen, I had never heard of this term womb loss before encountering your work, and I always use the word miscarriage and didn’t think anything of it. Can you help educate our listeners on this shift in language and this whole notion you have of how do we soften our language?
ER: Yeah. So I’ll start at the beginning of your question. The word miscarriage no longer resonates with me. It has that prefix miss as in mistake as in you did something wrong. And unfortunately, so much of language around women’s reproductive health, female reproductive health, it’s very demeaning actually, as much as it’s codified in western medicine. So I wanted to offer with the book other options, I wanted readers to know what exists. We don’t have to settle for what exists. We can create new language that feels more respectful to us. So oftentimes pregnancy loss, early pregnancy loss, that’s what miscarriages, it’s usually in America, at least a pregnancy that ends before 20 weeks, so that’s often referred to as miscarriage. So what I offer in the book are other terms like pregnancy loss. It’s a little more general. It doesn’t have that miss at the beginning, no sense of onus when so oftentimes such loss is really out of our control. It’s chromosomal abnormalities or honestly, Tami, there’s not enough research for women’s reproductive health. So hopefully in the coming years we’ll know more, but wanting to help relieve survivors of womb loss of the guilt that is so prevalent among us with language that is softer, that is more compassionate, that’s more humanizing.
TS: I was talking to a friend of mine and I was talking about this conversation you and I were having, and I said, why do you think there’s so much shame and stigma around people talking about pregnancy loss? And she said, well, look, Tami, this is all not that obvious for you because you don’t identify as a heterosexual and you don’t take on those norms. But for a lot of women who do, there’s this sense that as a woman, part of your value historically through the ages comes from your ability, your capacity to birth children and give heirs, and that’s part of your value as a woman. And I was like, oh yeah, I never really thought about that. So anyway, I’m wondering what you think of that observation.
ER: Oh yes, absolutely, Tami. Very much so. Yeah, I had someone just recently a woman who had experienced pregnancy loss 50 years ago who read my manuscript and said that it moved her. And she said that she very much felt like she had failed and that her partner at the time felt that way towards her. And I think there’s this misconception that pregnancy automatically leads to a living child, to a baby, despite the odds of having experienced loss being really high and completely agree that many women, their ability to conceive, to carry a pregnancy, to birth a living child can be so intimately tied to their self-worth identity as a woman very much. I hear that a lot. I hear that a lot. And so I wanted very much to write a book that could meet them in that place and tell them that, no, it’s not your fault. So many times it’s beyond our control. And you deserve to feel held and seen as you process this loss. And you are no less deserving of that kind of support,
TS: This notion of being seen, acknowledged, not putting our womb loss and hiding it away. What would it be like do you think, what changes would have to take place at a societal level for that to be the case for this to be normalized?
ER: Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind, hearing that Tami’s systems changes, you might be surprised to know that this topic of perinatal loss, pregnancy and infant loss, womb loss, it’s not often covered in the standard education for people who work with pregnant people, whether it’s therapists having gone through a marriage and family therapy program. I know that for myself, friends who are nurses who are doctors, OBGYNs, it’s surprising. It’s astounding really how this education is not woven into the standard training. So for those of us who go through this kind of loss, we’re met with healing and health providers who are not trained, this kind of education’s kind of knowledge you have to search for, you have to go out of your way to acquire. And so I think one of the biggest changes we can make is to have those who are in places of power to make decisions about what goes into the curriculum, to integrate both grief and trauma sensitive care in general, and then especially for those navigating pregnancy and bereavement at the same time. And just I think that can have such powerful ripple effects. That said, my hope is that with each person who comes to this book, that they’ll gift it to another person, and that this grassroots movement will have a lot of power to influence those larger systems changes.
TS: You write about that moment when you learn about the fact that your pregnancy isn’t viable or when you get that information from a healthcare provider and you write, hearing about our womb loss is a moment that deserves reverence. But all too often I hear stories from womb loss survivors that speak to a deep and urgent need for our healthcare providers, the programs that train them and the institutions where we receive care to be better equipped to offer grief and trauma sensitive care. We need and deserve compassionate holding environments so that the trauma of our loss is not compounded by trauma from how we learned about it, the notion of reverence during that moment. I wonder if you can speak directly to that.
ER: Yes. So with other forms of death, it is just automatic that a sense of pause and reverence is afforded to the person grieving. And yet with pregnancy and infant loss, with womb loss, that’s so often not the case. And rather many of us are met with phrases that feel very hurtful or insensitive, for example. Well, it wasn’t a baby, and some people may feel it was, some people may not and still feel grief. I heard, well, at least it was early, early in the pregnancy. So it’s just so common to hear dismissive remarks like that. And so the idea of reverence, I think is so missing from this conversation that many of the books I saw out there, Tami, in the time that I was going through my acute grief, really focus on information, medical information or the mental health side of the topic. And it all felt very neck up, and I wanted something that would sink into the heart.
And the word reverence really came to me in the writing of the book these past four years that sinking down, that going into a more sacred space, reverence is the key. And in the book I write, what if our healthcare providers were to enter the room, say you were in a birthing center or a hospital, were to enter the room with reverence as if they were entering a sacred place in nature or a sacred place of worship with soft, quiet steps and reverence, a willingness to suspend what’s going on for them and to really be with you and what’s going on for you to companion you in that moment.
TS: You mentioned how this topic can be approached from a neck up and you wanted to do something different, not a neck up perspective, but a full body. And you’ve done that with your book very, very much. And I think part of the challenge, if you will, in reading To Tend and To Hold, is entering a full body experience of our shared grief in these experiences. It’s big and it’s hard and it’s challenging, and you emphasize again and again this notion of how we can somatically be with our whole body, selves, neck down, and our head, all of ourselves and you, the book is filled with loving, gentle self-tending practices. And I wonder if you can just give our listeners a sense of that, a sense of some of the practices that you offer in the book and that you personally have found helpful.
ER: Thank you for asking that, Tami. So there are many parts of me that came into the writing process, my marriage and family therapy self, my yoga teacher self myself as a survivor of womb loss and trauma. And as those different parts of me came to the page, they brought with them what helped them. And in my own grieving and healing process, I found that not any one thing was a magic elixir that for me, it was tending to myself in many different ways. So physically, mentally, relationally, spiritually. And I wanted to make it a point to share grounding practices, to help stem any feeling of overwhelm because when you are postpartum, whether it’s after a living child with a living child or without one, the last thing you really want to do is pick up a book. You’re exhausted. You’ve gone through something so tremendous on many levels. And so I wanted to write a book that felt doable and to pause from information and to bring us down, neck, down into the heart, into the body with these grounding practices. And one that I love sharing so simple is taking three breaths. So in the book, I invite the readers to first find a sense of grounding, feeling their sit bones on the chair that they’re on or on the ground, feeling their feet rooting into the earth as the feet are down, and just allowing their body to breathe naturally without effort.
And then if it feels right to inhale intentionally with the word in and exhale with the word out. So in, out, in, out, in, out.
And it’s just three breaths. But I have found in my own life and in my work with others that three breaths can be a lot. It can be enough to settle us into a place of feeling more grounded. And it’s from that place of grounding and from that paw, that intentional pause that we can better show up for the moment and make intentional decisions about what comes next.
TS: You offer dozens of these somatic practices, breathing practices and more different ways of self-tending through touch and massage. And even with the three breaths, one of the things I loved is at some point in the book you talked about softening with each exhale as we do it. So we’re breathing in, and then the exhale we say soften.
And I noticed I did that as I was reading, and I loved softening with the exhale. And I want to read here a quote that also gives people a practice that I love. Our bodies are our forever homes. We’re worthy of living in our homes with comfort and ease. The following is a compassionate phrase. I often say to myself when I struggle to feel at home in my body, and then the phrase is, this is where I am at. And I wonder if you can tell us how you practice with that phrase when you’re struggling to be feeling at home in your body.
ER: Yes, and I’ll use a very concrete example. So after going through five pregnancies, three that ended with living children, two that ended in loss, it’s been hard to come back to my pre pregnant weight, my non-pregnant weight, very concrete example. And this is within the context of our culture that really promotes bouncing back and just getting back to your life quickly. So I’m almost three years postpartum, Tami. After my most recent pregnancy, I experienced a separation of my abdominal muscles that makes my belly still bulge. So I’ll still get many comments from people like, oh, are you expecting? And I’ll say, no, I’m not. And this is where I’m at. That’s what I’ll say in my mind, this may not feel comfortable for me and this is where I’m at, and I don’t feel ashamed even though I don’t know, maybe I should, but I don’t. This is where I’m at. And so I meet these moments for myself where I would want something different. I’d like to get there, and I want to have compassion for myself that I’m doing my best. And this is where I’m at.
TS: This notion of relating lovingly compassionately to our bodies. It does seem that postpartum brings up a certain set of challenges around that, that you’ve talked about one, which is how our body appears to other people. But it sounds like it just brings up a lot of challenges, especially even being able to connect back with our bellies after a loss and feeling at home in our forever home. And I wonder if you can just talk about that journey for women and the women that you work with.
ER: So the belly, yeah, it’s such an intimate place on our body. And what’s interesting that I noticed Tami and other resources for pregnancy and infant loss for womb loss, they’re so quick to tell us to put our hands on our belly. Now, if you’ve experienced this kind of loss and if it felt traumatic for you, that can be so hard to do. I mean, the act itself is simple enough, but that can be very, very challenging to bring touch to that place. And so what I wanted to do was to let people know you don’t have to touch that place if it feels tender. And you can take your time reconnecting with that part of you. And yeah, you can go at your own pace and you can do in many different ways. Maybe it’s not physically touching, but I have a section in each chapter called Offering from the Collective, which one of the parts of the book I’m most excited about having healing and health practitioners share their modality and how that modality can apply to wo loss survivors.
And they all offer different ways of connecting with the womb space. And one can be just hovering your hands in front of your womb, in front of your belly and letting that be enough, or maybe breathing in and imagining energy, like loving energy flowing down the womb space. So I think the term self-tending can be really helpful for folks. It’s a term I came to in lieu of self-care because I wanted something that felt deeper, felt more substantive. And if you think of tending a garden, there’s a sense of slowness and grounding and also a reverence. You’re with mother nature. So yeah, encouraging people to be tender with themselves and their bodies and instead of trying to do maybe just have that framework in mind, I’m going to be tender with myself. I’m going to tender with my body and my womb and see where that leads you because what grieving and healing looks like for each of us is so unique. So rather than give you, give concrete steps. How about a framework? Let’s be gentle, let’s tend.
TS: Eileen, you and I were talking before we started the recording and you were sharing with me that you went on a family journey to the East Coast to record the audio book of To Tend and To Hold. And you said, I went with my three living children, and a couple times you’ve referred to your living children and you’ve also shared that you had two womb loss experiences. And I wonder by using the language of talking about your living children, putting that word in living children, is that a way for you of bringing awareness and honoring your loss? And I’d love to hear more about that as a language construction and kind of what it brings up for you and what you imagine it brings up for people you’re talking to as well.
ER: Yeah, that’s a great question, Tami. And it’s not a term living, adding, living in front of children. It’s not something I’ve always done and something actually I’ve only done more recently. I think maybe that’s part of writing the book and my process of grieving has evolved and mourning. So yeah, at this point I use it. I use it quite consistently to honor that I’ve experienced pregnancy loss to bring attention to the fact that I endured that because it’s worth acknowledging. You see, you might see, if you see me in person, you might see I have three children, but you won’t know that I’ve also experienced loss. And so I do like to highlight that now as a way of advocacy. It’s a way of activism. My activism looks so different than when I was in college. I’m not marching anymore and not going to rallies. My activism I feel like is a little more quiet these days, but no less. I’d like to think no less powerful or profound. So planting the seed with that word living and yeah, modeling for others that you can do that too if it feels right for you. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay.
TS: So I want to ask a question without being sort of rude or confrontational in any way, but bringing forth something I imagine is in the collective field around a topic like this, which is like, okay, so there was a womb loss at X number of weeks. Why is this person still grieving this X number of years later? Like really? And so I’m curious how you could help respond to that voice in a way that will help educate someone who’s internalized that perspective in some way.
ER: Well, what comes to mind as I listen to that question, Tami, is my readers. So to my readers, I would say what matters most is what is meaningful to you. So if that pregnancy has a lot of meaning, I encourage you to honor that in the face of situations where you met with callous remarks like that you might think route into your meaning and not pay any heat. If you feel called to do some educating, you might use some words to respond. You might say, no matter how long I adjusted the pregnancy, it meant a lot to me.
I feel like oftentimes you may not have the energy to do that, or you might find yourself in a place of shock or uncertainty. I certainly did when a really close friend of mine had told me, well, at least it was very early, I didn’t know what to say. And if that happens to listeners, if that’s the experience you’ve had, know that that’s okay. You may not know what to say in the moment. You may think about it afterward, and you may need time to gain clarity about what feels right for you to do or say in that moment, all the while, I encourage you to honor what is most meaningful to you and trust that that may be enough for you to know that for yourself. And then when you meet others who experience womb loss, that you might meet them with the kind of care you would’ve wanted.
TS: So I mentioned to you that this phrase, womb loss, that was new to me, that I encountered in your work. And I want to make sure that people aren’t wondering at this point, what exactly is Eileen referencing? Whatcha talking about that term?
ER: Right. So womb loss is a term I use to refer to pregnancy and infant loss. So any loss that has occurred during a pregnancy or after a living baby has been born. It’s a term I came to know through the work of Tami Lynn Kent. She’s an amazing women’s pelvic floor physical therapist based in Oregon, and she has many wonderful books. And one of the books I came to use that phrase, and it really left a deep impression on me. And going through pregnancy and infant loss, wound loss myself and wanting to support survivors, other survivors, I knew I wanted to center the loss within us and of us. So saying womb loss, I’m acknowledging that this loss occurred womb in this organ. The womb is the uterus, it’s the space that a pregnancy will grow, a child will grow, and it’s an amazing, miraculous organ. And to say womb loss to me feels like we’re honoring that this happened to you and your body. And the focus is not only on the baby that died or the pregnancy that ended, I think it affords the reverence that I’m advocating for with the book. And so for me, that’s the introduction I had to the term and it really resonated with me. And I hope that it helps others who maybe are looking for different language.
TS: What have you found is the most helpful for people in the acute part of the grieving process?
ER: A few things. Space. So holding space, not trying to rush them to the next thing, the next decision that needs to be made, but giving them a moment, giving them some space, even if it’s five minutes, 10 minutes, I’m thinking particularly about my first pregnancy loss experience. And the doctor who was with me after she did the ultrasound saw that it was no longer a heartbeat. She stood there as I began to not just cry, but she stood there in silence, Tami, for probably a good minute before telling me that she’ll give me a moment alone before we begin to discuss what might come next. And then when she came back, we discussed options. She gave me time alone again to consider the options and what felt right to me. So giving space, giving some time for us to digest the news if we’re just learning about the news.
And I keep coming back to the word reverence, and I’m thinking of a story of a cousin of mine who found out about her pregnancy ending in an ultrasound appointment. And unfortunately, if you have an ultrasound done by a technician, there’s a waiting period between when that technician does the ultrasound and when a doctor comes in to interpret the results. So often people will sense something is amiss from the technician, but they have to wait until that doctor comes in to interpret those results. And my cousin had shared that there was that very difficult waiting period. They were told the news that the pregnancy had ended spontaneously, and they were told that it could take their time, but the doctor turned on the lights, closed the door quite loudly, and it was very jarring for them. So I can’t help but think back to that memory she shared with me and wondered, well, if there was a sense of reverence in the room, if the providers had embodied a sense of reverence, what could have shifted? Maybe asking the couple, would you like the lights to remain off? We can being really tangible. We can give you five more minutes before the next patient needs to come in. Closing the door softly, gently being very trauma aware in that way of setting clear expectations for what can happen next and limiting things that can be very activating or jarring.
TS: So I asked you about the acute phase of grief, and one of the things that you write about is how there’s no timeline. And I wonder if you could say more about that. Someone who still finds themselves having a grief response perhaps years or even decades later.
ER: Yeah, I’d say to them that that’s okay. If you find that you’re feeling a lot of grief that prevents you from living your daily life, that can be a good signal that you need extra support. And if that’s not the case, but you feel grief and you’re still able to go about your daily life just for the most part, fine, you’re still functioning. I want to affirm for you that it’s okay to feel grief. It’s okay to feel grief 50 years out, which I’ve heard from survivors, this grief may not necessarily ever go away. Grief, I define as a response you feel to a loss that is meaningful. So it’s neither good nor bad, it’s a response. So if you’re still responding to this loss, that feels meaningful, that makes sense to me.
TS: What have you found have been some of the most helpful rituals or suggestions that you’ve able to provide people that you work with for ways of honoring this sense of what and who they’ve lost?
ER: One ritual that comes to mind that I share in the book is lighting of candles. And I’ve done this with clients who are postpartum with living children and have also experienced loss. So lighting three candles, the first candle I’ll light and I’ll say, this is an honor of the partner, if there’s a partner, and I’ll honor all that they’ve done to support the birthing person. Then the second candle light, and I’ll say, this is honor of you, the birthing person, the pregnant person. And I’ll share words about their journey and the resilience they’ve shown. Then the third candle, often light and say, this is an honor of all your children. If they feel like the pregnancy losses were children, were babies, I’ll say, this is for your living children and those who are no longer with us. And usually as simple as that sounds, it could land so powerfully offering a moment to pause and acknowledge. And that’s what I try to do with the book, with all the practices. The ritual practices is to offer ones that are pretty simple on the surface, but that you can add layers and deepen the meaning for yourself. But my hope is that people will intuit their way to rituals that feel healing for them, that feel comforting for them.
Actually, one story that comes to mind that’s in the book, we had driven all the way up to Canada to Alberta. We were in Calgary and we were visiting with another family who had experience in their case, infant loss. And as we were leaving, the husband had stopped and said, Eileen, do you want a light of candle for our losses? And I was really quite surprised we didn’t really have much conversation about our losses. And I said, yes. And they had my second living child pick out an incense stick, put it on their altar where they had an urn for their baby who had died. And yeah, they lit the incense and we all just stood there for a moment of silence. And that was it. Not that that was it in any minimizing way, but simple and yet profound. We all stood there in silence for maybe a few seconds. Really finding a way that feels right for you and your family to grieve, to mourn, to show what you feel in response to your loss. I think whatever is most meaningful is what matters.
TS: You’ve spent time gathering with other women who have gone through the grief of wound loss. Tell me about how a gathering like that functions and how someone could create one if they felt inspired to.
ER: Yes. So the gatherings that I had organized were all intuition driven. I invited guests to enter. I had the luxury, the privilege of hosting these in beautiful homes in Los Angeles. So they would enter the home and there would be a beautiful dining table set. We would sit down and there would be music playing that was both emotional, but also with a sense of warmth and maybe a little bit of hope. We’d sit down and we would say our names and what drew us to be there that evening. That was the prompt. That was it. And we would sit in silence as each person took a turn responding and they were welcome to share what felt right for them, then we would be served by the chef who was there cooking for us onsite. And I’m so lucky for two of my dinners, Han O, she’s the author of the first 40 days, one of the most seminal books on postpartum care.
She runs a company here in southern California called Mother Bees. So she catered my first one in a third dinner. So she explained to my guests what all these dishes meant for the postpartum body, how it was nourishing for them. And you may not get haunted to go to your dinner, but you can provide food that is intentionally geared towards the healing postpartum body, and you might share why you chose that food. And then my guests and I, we would eat, we would let conversation be organic, and oftentimes it would circle back to our losses. And then there’s usually has been some kind of ritual component. With my first dining event, we walked to the pool that was in the backyard. We each took an LED candle for ourselves and one for each of our losses. And in silence, we placed those candles in the pool. And that was the manifestation of that vision that I shared with you at the start of our conversation, Tami, women gathered around a body of water at night to the light of the full moon, gazing down at numerous candles, candles that embodied their grief. And so for those listening, if you want to create a gathering, I encourage you to use your intuition. It might follow this format that I have followed. I think the sharing of food that’s postpartum specific and then doing some kind of ritual, even at something as simple as lighting candles and just offering this space and this time to acknowledge, because acknowledgement can be so healing, so powerful, acknowledging the shared loss.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Eileen Rosete. She’s the author of the new book, To Tend and To Hold, honoring our bodies, our needs, and our grief through pregnancy and infant loss. And I mentioned this book is written with such a loving and attuned feeling, tone to the grieving person. It’s a kind of companion through the loss process. What’s your hope, Eileen, for what your dear readers will get from To Tend and To Hold.
ER: Well for those who read the physical book, I hope that holding it and I’m holding in my hands as I’m telling you this, Tami, it’s hardcover because sounds true, believed in my vision. I hope that they hold this hardcover book and feel the validity of what they are experiencing. I hope that my readers feel seen, feel held, and feel honored because this book exists because you deserve it. I hope it helps my readers access any grief that they’re holding in their bodies and encourages them to feel into that in their own way, at their own time. Because in feeling what you are holding onto can help soften, soften those big feelings. And in that softening Dear readers, I hope that you are able to live lives that are meaningful, that are not constrained by your grief. Let lives that integrate your grief lives that are meaningful and fulfilling.
TS: Eileen Rosete, author of the new book To Tend and To Hold. Thank you so much.
ER: Thank you, Tami.
TS: And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the after-show Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundtrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.
