No One Can Tell You How to Heal: Real Talk on Grief, Motherhood, and Support

Vallen Webb (: 00:01

Hey mama, welcome back to another episode of the Pregnancy Loss and Motherhood podcast. I am so glad you are here at the same time. I hate that you have to be here for the reason it's never a good one.

I'm in all the feels today. I went to get my girls from my brother's house in Michigan and I had recorded this episode in the car. Don't worry, super safe. I wasn't holding my phone or anything. But I realized I wasn't recording and I was so upset because it was so good. This podcast episode will be more like my original episodes where I just wing it and I just talk about how I'm feeling. I don't have anything outlined today. I don't have anything

I just I had this thought in my head about healing and what it's like to feel like we have to be on a timeline.

So this episode, we're gonna talk about like, when am I gonna heal? Am I gonna heal? How long is that gonna take? What is it gonna take me? Like, what do I have to do? Who do I have to talk to? What do I like? There are so many questions after you lose a baby and so let's dive in. I...

Vallen Webb (: 01:33

When we're grieving the loss of our child, we get a lot of messages from people, from our culture, from social media, from coworkers, from music, from magazine articles and podcast episodes and...

It's all shit. I will say that. It's fucking shit. There is absolutely no timeline that you need to be concerned about other than not having one. I like to be as transparent and truthful and loving as possible at the same time. From what I have seen so far, being in this lost space as a mom but also an educator in loss, in pregnancy and infant loss,

is that it never goes away. It is never gonna go away. And it fucking sucks. But also, why would it? It's our child. It's the love that we have for that child. It is the...

I mean, we're mourning our future that we were supposed to have and it being taken away. We're mourning an identity that we no longer match with. It's mourning friendships and relationships that can't seem to outlast our grief. There's no timeline.

I want you to understand that you do not have to listen to a goddamn person who tells you that you need to be over your loss, you know, within a year, within two, three, four, five. The first support group that I ever went to, the facilitator was 42 years out from her loss. And when she told us about her loss and her baby,

Vallen Webb (: 03:38

She was still crying and mourning her sweet child. It doesn't go away. Now, I am all about hope. Not necessarily silver linings. I loathed silver linings in the beginning. I just wanted to fucking butcher them all. But there is a point day by day where

you start, you'll see glimpses or glimmers. Some people call them glimmers, but it is, it's a sign that things won't always be this dark. It's a sign that there is hope and there is life outside of our grief bubble. This terrible grief bubble, this terrible, how do you call it, smog or fog. Like, it sucks.

but there are points in time, little pieces throughout your day where you may start smiling more, you may start laughing a little more, you may...

Vallen Webb (: 04:59

don't know, just might, maybe you find a little, little of joy in your day. Maybe you notice a stranger looking at you or, I don't know, a friend who knows what happened just looks at you with so much love and you just feel like, wow, I'm so lucky to have them. It can be anything. Don't discount these little signs.

because you can also look at it as a sign from your baby telling you that you will be okay. We don't wanna discount our baby. It's fine. For sending us all these signs and we just have our blinders on because we're so fucking pissed off in our rage that this happened. But.

One thing I always like to say as well is that you are the only thing that you need for your healing. Now that doesn't mean don't do therapy, don't do somatic therapy and body movements and breathing exercises and trauma therapy. Do all the things. But what is the one common thread through all of that?

It is 100 % you. You literally don't need anybody else. you are, maybe I should phrase that a different way, you are the tool that will get you through this. Now, doing those other things supports you and in turn supports your healing and your growth through this.

And I also want you to know, like, I'm gonna say that a lot. Also, also, because there's so much, because there's so many details and it's...

Vallen Webb (: 07:13

Also, it's okay to be in your grave.

You don't have to look for glimmers or pieces of hope. If you're not there yet, I will never tell you you have to rush anything. You are allowed to sit in that pain.

in the melancholy and the sadness in the fucking ferocious rage. You are allowed to sit in the devastation. You're allowed to sit in your feelings. If you know there was injustice, if there was birth trauma or obstetric violence, if somebody made a mistake and it's the reason your baby died. You are allowed to be in that.

as long as you need, as long as it's helpful, I should say. Because I also think there is a point where we have to make a decision and a choice.

start looking at life a little differently to get out to get out of this fucking grief hole, right?

Vallen Webb (: 08:34

You don't have to do it right away. If you are new here, my daughter Evelyn James Webb was born in 2019. She was 40 weeks and five days from a percentile.

Sorry a partial placental abruption and Possible cord accident. I never got a hundred percent reason why it happened But I'm six almost six years out from my loss and There will be days when I sit in In it I'm just gonna sit in it I'm going to sit and

Let myself hold it. Let myself be in it and feel it. I will cry in bed at night if I need to while I'm holding her urn. I will start randomly crying when a certain song comes on. There's a lot that comes along with this loss.

Vallen Webb (: 09:53

Obviously I've never Maybe not obviously if you're new I never experienced such a significant loss such as this

Vallen Webb (: 10:09

So just learning how to hold it with still living.

I mean if you're anything like me there were days when I just didn't want to exist anymore. And that's not to say that I felt suicidal, I didn't. But there were times and moments where I would be like, yeah I just wish I could be with her. I just don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to feel this way.

anymore and

Vallen Webb (: 10:51

Luckily for me, I had two little girls at home that needed me. My husband was on a deployment at the time. He did get to come home for a little bit, but I had another reason to keep going. And I know that's not the same for all of us. I know there are so many women whose first baby dies. And I just, I'm so sorry if that's you.

It shouldn't have ever happened. But as a lost mom, you realize that the longer time goes on, the more resilience you build to the grief that you hold. And the resilience isn't to do away with our grief or our pain. I would say the resilience is like a weight rack.

And our grief is the barbell or the weight. The resilience helps us learn how to hold it better. It builds, know, it's this whole thing. We're whole different people. Like the Valen before, I mean even the Valen before I became a mom, there are so many versions of me who...

Maybe not die because I still feel them within me. I still feel the personalities and the emotions of all of the versions of me that I ever was. And I'm so grateful for that because I can honor each one. And so I notice myself being like, you did so good.

You stayed alive. You got through it. And that is something that we need to celebrate. Every fucking day, if we need to. Like, that's another thing. Don't let anybody tell you, wow, you're like just happy you're getting through the day. Fuck, yes, I am. Yep. I survived today. I'm a badass. That's all there is to it.

Vallen Webb (: 13:19

And

Vallen Webb (: 13:23

A big piece of the reason I wanted to do this episode was I

Vallen Webb (: 13:35

So one of the reasons, one of the, the reason I got the idea for this specific episode one is that Evelyn's birthday is coming up, her sixth birthday. But there's this clip that's been floating around from Billy Bob Thornton's.

Interview from like Oprah's master class or something in I just love him. I think he's hilarious I think he's just so raw But I didn't know this about him, but he when he was younger he had he he had a brother who died Like it was it was unexpected. He had a heart issue and he was his younger brother but what he said was just

Like every time I see this, I share it because it's the truth. So I'm gonna read, I wrote down some of the things that he said. It might be paraphrased, but I hope that it resonates in some way with you or helps you. But he said, I don't trust happiness. There's a melancholy in me that never goes away. I'm half happy and half sad at any given moment.

You won't get over it.

The more you embrace it though, the better off that you will be. I don't want to forget my brother. I don't want to forget what it felt like when he died. He deserves that. That's how important he was. So if I have to suffer, if I have to be sad the rest of my life, if I have to live without his certain something, that's the way that I'll honor him. I think it's okay to have all those feelings.

Vallen Webb (: 15:24

And so that's not exactly well, it is pretty word-for-word, but not everything I'll leave a link in the show notes though for the clip that you can read it because you can just feel it from when he's saying it but How do we like our? Healing journey is forever, right? We've kind of talked about that And that's okay

We're human beings, are here to experience the spectrum of emotions and experiences and ultimately who we become is how we handle our life.

There's gonna be times that we don't handle it at all. There's gonna be times where we're really shitty at handling it. There's gonna be times where we're great at it. But all in all, this journey is ours. And nobody gets to tell us how it looks, what it should look like. Nobody gets to tell us how long it should take. You know, I had...

For me, another one of the tools or resources that I utilized was medication. At my six week checkup with my midwife after I had Evelyn, I had gone in knowing that I just needed something.

I needed something to help me to survive this, the initial grief that just felt like it was taking everything from me. And so I asked about medication, you know, and I got pushback for it initially saying that some people who get on it get well enough or energized enough to kill themselves.

Vallen Webb (: 17:25

And for me, if you knew me, you would know how much I love life. I love life so much it hurts.

Like this beauty, like I am somebody who goes outside and I will stare at the clouds and the trees and I will watch the wind blow through the grass and the flowers. I will touch everything. I will smell the flowers. I will water my plants. And I just, I'm like, wow, I am stunned. Every moment.

because of how much I love life. sorry. Long story short, I was just, I was insulted for one that she would think that that was me. Not that I know she was being careful. I know that she cared about me. She witnessed everything. She was one of the witnesses of Evelyn and holding her. And...

So she finally let me take it and have it. I just had to find somebody obviously to continue monitoring me on them and I'm still on them six years later. I have tried two or three times to taper off of them and it was a complete disaster. I was worse than I have ever been and.

I just, decided, nope, this is not worth, not worth it. And the reason I'm telling you this is because a few years ago, I had, or not even a few, I'm so sorry, not a few years ago, it was like a year and a half ago.

Vallen Webb (: 19:12

I had somebody on my podcast, she was wonderful, amazing. I loved having her and I still to this day don't think I aired her episode because subconsciously I was a bit insulted by something she said, but it wasn't her intention. But she said something along the lines of like, with medication and everything, are you truly healed?

The medication, you know, when you're, I can't, I'm trying to paraphrase and remember, but it was more the feeling of what it made me feel that I remember, but just about how, you know, maybe I'm not healed because I'm on medication and I haven't worked through that part of it.

I think part of her is right. There are parts that I desperately need support with, including getting off of it. It's a process and don't do anything like that unless you talk to your doctor and have somebody supporting you. But it made me feel like everything that I had done up to that point in healing and growing, it was invalid. I felt so invalidated.

And I know that wasn't her intention. She was so lovely. And. But that's what I mean when nobody gets to fucking tell you how to heal. I know that even though I'm on medication, I have healed so much and it's not just about my daughter. There is a lot of childhood trauma that I had to deal with and still do. Estrangement from my mom.

You know, the one person that.

Vallen Webb (: 20:59

I need the most and don't have.

And so I had to remind myself, like, no, she doesn't get to tell me anything. not that she, again, not that she was trying to, but I know I'm getting on a bit of a tangent here and there, nobody gets to tell you how long it takes, because it's gonna be forever. And I, funny enough, I...

kind of talked about how I'm starting a marketplace for lost families. It's called the Evelyn James shop. And I made a bunch of sweatshirts and t-shirts with like sassy spicy sayings on them. And one of them's like, I'm grieving. I'll be grieving for the next hundred years or something. Like with a little angel baby and a bow on it because it's like, this isn't going away. This is who I am now.

If you, if I'm with you and I just start crying out of nowhere, sorry, like, this is me. Not that I wouldn't have before, you know, something struck me, but...

I am more self-confident and bold and

Vallen Webb (: 22:20

I just, I am my biggest fan because I know what it took to get me here.

And that's what I want you to do on your worst days. We want to always have somebody around to validate us and witness what we're going through to support us. But we can do that for ourselves. And I think that gets not talked about enough. Or if we do talk about it, it's kind of like, yeah, I'm OK.

We hide it, we mask, right, with coping. Because we don't have another choice but to survive it. We do, but most people don't wanna die. They just don't know how to feel better.

Vallen Webb (: 23:18

And that's the biggest point of this podcast.

I wanna help people by keeping my daughter alive for me.

Vallen Webb (: 23:31

And I know this wasn't meant to be a cry episode, but dang. Get your shit together, Valen. See, I invalidate my own grief.

Vallen Webb (: 23:46

I love you guys so much. And I'm so honored that you are here listening to this podcast. October will be year three. Even though I've changed the name like three times, it's back to its original, the Pregnancy Laws Motherhood podcast, which I'm very happy about.

You guys, you need to take care of yourself. You need to work.

Vallen Webb (: 24:18

You need to work on validating. You. You need to be okay.

Embrace fucking embrace the pain embrace the fear Embrace every emotion that comes

Vallen Webb (: 24:42

Embrace every bad day, every good day. Just literally live day by day.

One of the biggest tools I can give you that's free is gratitude, being grateful, even for like something you gotta buy yourself to make you fucking feel better.

There's a lot of our stories. There's a lot that we are not grateful for. And sometimes we can't get there because we're so angry and maybe resentful or you know, just there's so many hard emotions. Just be there for them all.

Like Billy Bob Thornton said, like the more we embrace it, the better that we'll be. And I think that just means having that realization that this is our life now.

And that's not to say that you cannot have a beautiful life, my God, my life, I, me, I've had this realization lately that I'm living my dream life despite the fact that I have a dead daughter that I don't get to see grow up.

Vallen Webb (: 26:13

And it's funny because I love manifestation and things like that. And so when I focus on something and it happens, I don't take the time to celebrate. But I was looking around just yesterday and I'm like, wow, I'm in my dream house. Like there's all this talk and everything we see on social media, we always want more. We always want prettier and better and upgrade like.

s been ours. We moved here in: 2021

Vallen Webb (: 27:14

We have our dream life. We have the big family that we always wanted. We have the van, like I have the van that I wanted. Of course I didn't always want a van. I will not lie to you and say that. But when I saw it, regardless of the price, regardless of anything, I was like, that's mine. And so although these are materialistic things,

Vallen Webb (: 27:48

They make my life better. I have a place for my kids to grow up. I have an awesome van to get me everywhere and travel. I have an amazing husband who supports me in everything. John has transformed so much.

I just, I'm in awe of him. And then me. I have become the person that I've always wanted to be and the mom that I wanted to be.

And so, regardless of how terrible we feel, look around.

especially on those really hard days. Especially if the only thing you can muster is like, God, I'm so fucking grateful I have this energy drink. I'm so fucking grateful, like, our water bills paid. I am so grateful I'm alive. That was an affirmation for the longest time. I'm so glad that I am here being able to be with my other kids. So.

Whole ball of feelings here. hope, I hope just this conversation helped in any way or made you feel validated or seen. I am here for you always. You guys can email me anytime at pregnancylosseducation at gmail.com and I wanna make sure you know.

Vallen Webb (: 29:38

This is why I'm here is for you. For you and me, selfishly. I am here for me too. It makes me feel better. The more I process, I have different thoughts, I start moving in different directions, I'm seeing things a different way and I get perspectives. so, I'm so grateful for you. Make sure, I think two weeks,

so july 20th the marketplace will launch and This isn't i'm not trying to turn this into some selling point but You they're like everything Is for bereaved families? Think of it kind of like the etsy the grief like the the grief version just for pregnancy infant and child loss

There will be free resources. There will be paid resources. There will be a directory And it's all just getting started so it's gonna be a slow build it takes time but like the engraved jewelry that I have and the sweatshirts and things and There will be other vendors who make things specifically for lost families The goal is to have it all in one place for you so that you have just a safe platform to find the things that you need and want

without being inundated with all the previous searching, you know, and all the ads that pop up for maybe all the baby stuff, the living baby stuff, baby showers, like, this is for you, built by me. And it's...

filled with love and it is gonna be one of the most amazing things I ever do. So I'm very proud of it and it's EvelynJames.shop. It's up right now but it's like the old version. I have somebody working on the back end on a whole new spread for it. So it will launch July 20th on Evelyn's birthday and I'm so proud of it and I can't wait for you guys to see it.

Vallen Webb (: 31:48

And until then, I will see you guys for another episode next week. Sending so much love to you.