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Writing about baby loss helps me feel connected to my children and I encourage others to give it a go

  • Loughborough University’s Dr Tamarin Norwood and Held in Our Hearts are encouraging bereaved parents to try writing to make sense of their experiences of baby loss and feel connected to their children
  • Dr Norwood and the Edinburgh-based charity teamed up earlier this year to create memory writing cards that provide a starting point for parents looking to communicate the feelings that come with baby loss, and these were distributed across Scotland
  • Seeing how the cards helped families, Dr Norwood and Held in Our Hearts are now looking to raise awareness of the benefits of writing on a wider scale in the hope of helping parents at what can be a difficult time of year
  • Dr Norwood, who authored a prize-winning essay on the birth and death of her son, believes writing can start important conversations with friends and family and work towards “breaking the taboo and stigma that surrounds baby loss”.

“In the build-up to events like birthdays or Mother’s Day, I write. It’s such a cathartic process and helps you release all the emotion, as it has to go somewhere.

“My writing is a legacy for my children and gives me a tangible link to them.”

Lindsay Donaldson has been bereaved for almost a decade, having lost her son at 18 weeks during her first pregnancy in 2013, and has been sharing her experience of grief with the internet for almost as long.

Initially, Lindsay’s blog was for baking recipes - having thrown herself into the hobby after her loss – but quickly the webpage became somewhere Lindsay could write about her daily emotions, the feelings towards her son and, as time went on, the four babies she lost during subsequent pregnancies.

Lindsay is sharing her story to highlight the importance of a campaign by Loughborough University’s Dr Tamarin Norwood and the charity Held in Our Hearts that looks to raise awareness of the benefits of writing about grief and start important conversations with friends and family about baby loss.

Lindsay, who now has a six-year-old daughter, said: “There is a stigma around baby loss and people are often worried about saying the wrong thing, so they don’t say anything at all.

“I’ve found writing has let people in my life access my grief and understand how it changes over time.

“I would definitely encourage bereaved parents to give writing a go – even if they decide not to share it anywhere. It can be a way of honouring and remembering your baby.”

The mission to raise awareness of the benefits of writing about baby loss started when Dr Tamarin Norwood won the Lancet essay prize for her essay that reflects on the birth and death of her son.

Dr Norwood, whose research looks at how bereavement and creativity can be combined, teamed up with Held in Our Hearts to create memory writing cards after identifying that there were few specialised writing resources for parents whose babies have died.

The cards were distributed across Scotland in support packages to families in hospitals that had just experienced baby loss and trialled in several writing workshops.

Seeing how they helped parents, Held in Our Hearts have added the memory writing cards – titled From the Heart Notelets’ - to their online gift shop in a bid to extend their reach and the charity and Dr Norwood launched a social media campaign earlier this month that promotes the benefits of writing for bereaved parents.

Dr Tamarin Norwood and the cards

Dr Norwood holding the From the Heart Notelets.

Dr Norwood said: “When parents have the opportunity to create their own stories and to really think about what that experience means for them, it can be really transformative because that lack of stories is one of the things that makes it so hard to get over the experience of baby loss.

“Very often parents find that because their loss isn't really acknowledged socially, they're not really sure what they have lost.

“If parents can learn to understand that it's natural to feel as awful as they do and that these lives are worthy of many, many stories - rich, long, big stories – then that can really improve bereavement outcomes.”

She continued: “The cards we have created, and writing in general, gives parents a chance to make sense of the experiences that they're living through and to give them an opportunity to start conversations with family and friends who may not know what to say.

“This is part of a wider goal of gradually breaking the taboo and the stigma that surrounds baby loss that means that when parents lose a baby, they feel like society understands and accepts their feelings of grief.”

Held in Our Hearts CEO Nicola Welsh says blog writing also helped her process the death of her three-week-old son in 2009.

Of what she hopes the memory writing cards and online campaign will achieve, she said: “We hope the cards and encouraging people to write will help families connect with their babies in a different way from talking therapies.

“Sometimes it can access different parts of grief and encourages everybody to dig deep and think about those continuing bonds we have with our little ones.”

Dr Tamarin Norwood and Held in Our Hearts worked on the project with co-investigator Dr Rob Tovey, also at Loughborough University, with advice from bereaved mother Dr Corrienne McCulloch.

Students and staff can visit the Loughborough University Mental health and wellbeing page for support across a wide range of mental health and wellbeing topics.

Notes for editors

Press release reference number: 23/39

Loughborough is one of the country’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines.

It has been awarded five stars in the independent QS Stars university rating scheme, named the best university in the world for sports-related subjects in the 2022 QS World University Rankings – the sixth year running – and University of the Year for Sport by The Times and Sunday Times University Guide 2022.

Loughborough is ranked 7th in The UK Complete University Guide 2023, 10th in the Guardian University League Table 2023 and 11th in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023.

Loughborough is consistently ranked in the top twenty of UK universities in the Times Higher Education’s ‘table of tables’, and in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 over 90% of its research was rated as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally-excellent’.

In recognition of its contribution to the sector, Loughborough has been awarded seven Queen's Anniversary Prizes.

The Loughborough University London campus is based on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and offers postgraduate and executive-level education, as well as research and enterprise opportunities. It is home to influential thought leaders, pioneering researchers and creative innovators who provide students with the highest quality of teaching and the very latest in modern thinking.

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