After a perinatal loss, many women and men experience a persistent feeling of fatigue, tension, and hypervigilance. Even long afterward, the body may remain tense, sleep may remain fragmented, and concentration may remain unstable.
This happens because perinatal grief does not only affect the emotional sphere, but also profoundly impacts the nervous system and, consequently, the body: there are now numerous studies on the impact that infertility, miscarriage, and perinatal death have on the lives of those affected.
As we have known for fifty years now, these life events are traumatic experiences that trigger a profound and lasting response in the body. After such an event, in fact, the body strives to regain balance and an acceptable level of well-being. Mindfulness is a way to reduce the impact that post-traumatic stress has on our lives and bodies after a bereavement. That is why, for many years now, we have incorporated mindfulness into the tools we use to support women and couples who have experienced infertility, miscarriage, and perinatal death.
Understanding how the body and mind function after a perinatal loss allows us to gain a clearer and more comprehensible perspective on the impact of a devastating experience that has called into question our sense of security, expectations, and continuity; it also means identifying practical tools we can use in our daily lives to improve our well-being and reduce, as much as possible, the burden of fatigue and stress that grief brings with it.
Mindfulness is a practical tool that helps reduce daily stress and promotes greater emotional regulation: It doesn’t take away the pain—because nothing can take away the pain of the soul—but it helps us redefine it, find a place for it, and free ourselves from that grip that all those who grieve know so well, having experienced it firsthand in the first few months after a loss. I myself, twenty years ago now, discovered mindfulness in the midst of my grief. I’ve never looked back.
What Is Mindfulness?
As Kabat-Zinn, a pioneerin the use of mindfulness as a clinicaltool for well-being, writes, “Mindfulness is the ability to pay attention—intentionally and without judgment—to the experience you are having moment by moment.”
Mindfulness is a state of mind— and therefore of the body—that can be cultivated through simple, brief practices that can be adapted to daily life.
After a loss, it can be difficult to stay in touch with what’s going on inside yourself.
Silence, stillness, or simply paying attention to your breath can bring intense thoughts and emotions to the surface. This is a normal reaction.
Mindfulness doesn’t ask us to change what we feel, but to acknowledge the experience for what it is, step by step, with an attitude of curiosity and respect. Learning to stay in touch with our emotions, sensations, and thoughts—without judging them or trying to change them—is a way to become more aware of our limitations, but also of our strengths: learning to be with ourselves and with what is happening, moment by moment, without wanting to be different from who we are, reshapes our response to stress and benefits our health.
Perinatal Grief and Stress: What Happens in the Body
When a loss disrupts one’s life plans, the nervous system can remain in a state of arousal and alertness for a very long time. Many people describe hypervigilance, difficulty relaxing, recurring thoughts, and profound fatigue that does not go away with rest.
These reactions are normal and have nothing to do with any supposed fragility or inability to cope with grief. In fact, they are the body’s way of trying to protect us after a traumatic event, by establishing a highly precise system of memories, stimulus evaluation, and responses. It doesn’t take much to trigger the alert system: seeing a stroller on the street, hearing a song we used to listen to while waiting for our baby, the smell of the disinfectant used at the hospital when we were admitted, a scene from a movie about pregnancy or childbirth, or hearing our child’s name spoken on the street—these are just some of the stimuli that can trigger our stress response. For many of us, life becomes one big trigger, because our hyper-alert mind links everything back to our threatening, painful, and exhausting traumatic event. In this context, mindfulness offers an opportunity to work directly with the experience of stress, helping us recognize the body’s signals and respond with greater awareness.
How Mindfulness Helps Reduce Stress
The practice of mindfulness allows us to observe thoughts and emotions as they come to our attention, without letting them take over our entire mind or overwhelm our whole body. Over time, through consistent practice, it becomes possible to create a small distance between what is happening inside us and our automatic defensive reactions, which often end up amplifying stress rather than reducing it.
The mindfulness course we offer annually to women and couples who have experienced infertility, miscarriage, and perinatal death aims to provide mindfulness techniques and practical tools for stress reduction: Learning the basics of mindfulness and practicing it with reasonable consistency improves overall well-being in the short, medium, and long term.
Most people who participate in the groups tell us that mindfulness exercises are helpful in everyday life and especially in emotionally intense situations: while she was in the waiting room waiting for test results, a song from the previous year came on the radio. Ilaria, who used to sing that song to her baby girl who was born too soon, was deeply moved. The practice allowed her to recognize the emotion as it arose—the emotional response to the music—without judging herself, feeling ashamed, or blaming herself for what she was feeling. The emotions stirred by that song were all there, but they didn’t overwhelm her: after a few minutes, Ilaria focused on her nostalgia and love for her little girl, without getting caught up in unpleasant thoughts and emotions, and was able to conduct the consultation while staying focused on the moment.
Learning to observe ourselves and our reactions to our surroundings reduces the impact of stress because it breaks the cycle of automatic thoughts and reactions, leading to greater balance, greater awareness, and greater “resilience”—even when facing the most challenging situations.
A message to take with you
Mindfulness doesn’t change what has happened, but it can change the way the body and mind bring it into the present. Reducing stress after a perinatal loss means easing, day by day, the burden weighing on the nervous system and, more broadly, on the entire body. Even just a few minutes at a time, even through simple actions, can help create more space, breathing room, and presence in daily life. Mindfulness does not erase the pain or the love we feel for our children, because its purpose is not to erase anything: mindfulness helps us navigate both the pain and the love with awareness and support.
Building on the experience of last year’s mindfulness groups for grieving parents, the Vāta Gīta ( “Song of the Wind”) meditation group was formed, and it meets once a month. The continuity provided by a group can make all the difference in mindfulness practice and help us stay consistent, as best we can.
Where to Start to Learn More About Mindfulness
Basic Texts
Thich Nhat Hanh, *The Miracle of Mindfulness*, Astrolabio
Jon Kabat-Zinn, *The Art of Learning from Everything*, Corbaccio
Chandra Candiani, *Silence Is a Living Thing*, Einaudi
Picture Books to Put Theory into Practice
Tina Oziewicz – Aleksandra Zajac: Do We Know Each Other?, Middle-earth
Anne Crausaz, *The Five Senses*, Marameo
Maria Loretta Giraldo – Nicoletta Bertelle I Close My Eyes and I Am, Stories of
