Name: Kelli
Pronouns: She/Her
Snapshot: Before Kelli provided the full-time Doula care she does today, she was one of the hearts behind POEM Rise. The mental health support she provided others came alongside her own story of loss and healing. Kelli recounts what it was like to experience the loss of her first pregnancy at 28 weeks and the impact it’s had on each subsequent pregnancy and parenting experience since. She sheds light on the weight of grief and encourages more honest mental health conversations with others.
Content warning: trauma, loss
How were you connected with POEM Rise?
I was hired to start it!
Tell us about your pregnancy and postpartum journey. How did your experiences impact your mental health?
As someone who was fascinated with pregnancy, birth, and motherhood from a young age, I was eager to start my family with my husband a couple of years after we were married. Unfortunately, though, our first pregnancy ended at 28 weeks when our son, Pax, was stillborn far too early. There’s never a “good” time to experience a loss such as this, but to have experienced it as we were beginning our family, to have my much-anticipated first pregnancy end so tragically, set the stage for the rest of my parenting journey in ways I’ve only recently come to understand. The trauma of perinatal loss never goes away. It’s something you carry throughout every subsequent pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum experience. It took away the innocence of bringing a new life into the world and made me nervous for every person who shared their pregnancy story with me. The weight of grief, the anxiety of all of the unknowns, and the emotional toll of having to learn how to navigate through life during a loss and after it, were a lot. Not only was I trying to learn how to cope, but I found myself having to teach others along the way which was exhausting, painful, and made me so angry. Our society has a lot of work to do around helping families through loss because your mental health will always be impacted. Maybe you realize it right away, or it’s months or years later, but you’re not the same.
Were there any forms of support you found beneficial to you in your journey?
Being able to talk things out with a close circle of friends and processing with my husband were my go-to forms of support. Without these options, I don’t know where I’d be today. In the years since experiencing our loss and adding more children to our family, I’ve done lots of work with my therapist to try and heal from these wounds which has made an amazing difference in my life recently.
Are there any words of wisdom or encouragement that you’d like to offer other birthing persons?
We all know that there aren’t many guarantees in life and that certainly applies to all of the unknowns of the perinatal period, whether you experience a loss or not. My encouragement is to be really mindful of who you surround yourself with throughout various seasons of life. Maybe your family is your support system and that’s fantastic. Maybe it’s a group of friends who are like a chosen family who get you through and that’s also fantastic. We are not meant to go through life alone. The earlier you find your people and learn how to share all of life’s highs, lows, and plateaus with them, the better off you will be. Be honest about where you are on our mental health journey and shed any shame associated with asking for help. You are meant for great things and you can move past what feels heavy, lonely, and dark right now.
