By Hope H. Dover
October is Pregnancy Loss and Awareness Month, when we grieve with the bereaved who have experienced pregnancy loss or infant death and remember their precious babies. Hope H. Dover has walked this loss and shares 3 ways to find hope again after pregnancy loss.
The day we learned our first baby would not survive outside my womb, I felt everything crumble. When the doctor looked at me and said, “It’s not good,” my world fell apart in a matter of minutes, and nothing made sense. Thirteen months later, when a blood test confirmed I was losing our second baby, my world fell apart again.
The grief experienced after pregnancy loss can leave you wondering if hope will ever return. The ache is deep as the dreams you carried are crushed. It feels like the pieces of your heart will never fit back together again.
It has been thirteen years since I heard those words that stopped my world from spinning. Over the years, I’ve learned that hope doesn’t return all at once. It grows slowly through surrender, remembrance, and the slow, steady work of learning to live fully after loss. Here are three ways to begin to hope again after pregnancy loss.
1. Invite God In When Hope Feels Passive
After loss, it’s easy to think that hope will just reappear one day. If enough time passes, the pain will fade and peace will follow. But hope isn’t something that simply happens to us and time doesn’t diminish the pain of losing a child. Hope is something we pursue and grow into.
For a long time, I tried to fix my grief. I busied myself and tried to control what healing would look like. It took me a while to realize that hope is not found in control. Hope is found in surrender. The act of inviting God into our pain, instead of hiding it from Him, can be the beginning of healing.
Sometimes hope looks like whispering a simple prayer through tears: “God, please be near.” Other days, it’s opening your Bible even when your heart feels numb. Hope begins to stir when we stop trying to fill the cracks ourselves and allow God to fill them with His presence.
The psalmist reminds us, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18, ESV). God doesn’t ask us to have it all together before we bring our pain to Him. He only asks that we bring everything to him.
We begin to find hope again when we stop trying to fix our pain and start inviting God into it.
2. Remember God’s Presence When the Silence Feels Heavy
There were times in my grief journey when God felt far away. The prayers I prayed seemed to be returned with silence. Wondering if God still hears me and sees me is one of the loneliest feelings in grief. I’ve come to learn that His silence doesn’t mean He is absent.
Sometimes, remembering His faithfulness becomes the bridge back to hope. When I look back, I can see moments when God carried me even when I didn’t realize it. The right people showed up at just the right time. The words I needed to hear were spoken exactly when I needed to hear them. A song would play on the radio that spoke directly to my heart. Each one was a reminder that God had never left me.
God often calls us to remember. In scripture, He commanded His people to build altars and gather stones as memorials of what He had done. Those markers weren’t for God’s sake; they were for His people to remember His goodness.
You might not have physical stones to stack, but you can find your own ways to remember His faithfulness. Write down the ways God has met you in your grief. Revisit a verse that once brought comfort and trace the ways it still speaks. Share your story with someone walking a similar path.
Remembering doesn’t have to be about reliving the pain. It can serve as a way of recognizing God’s presence within it.
3. Step Toward Abundant Life When You’re Ready
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting or moving on. It means learning to live fully again, with both joy and sorrow held side by side. I struggled with this for a long time but eventually came to view the space where joy and sorrow meet as sacred.
In time, God began teaching me that abundance after loss doesn’t mean a life void of grief. It means believing and accepting that even within the grief, His goodness still remains. I learned to see abundance not as the absence of sorrow but as the presence of grace in the sorrow.
Stepping toward abundance will look different for each of us. For me, it meant practicing gratitude, even for small things like a sunrise or the sound of my children’s laughter. It meant sharing my story with others and finding connection in our shared pain. I had to learn to trust that joy could return, even if it looked different than it did before my losses.
Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, ESV). That promise is for everyone. It’s for those of us with hearts still mending. It’s for those who wonder if joy can exist alongside sorrow. It’s for those who want to believe that light can still break through the cracks.
Abundance after loss isn’t found in forgetting what was lost. It’s found in remembering Who remains.
A Closing Word
If hope still feels far away, know that you are not alone. The God who wept at the tomb is the same God who walks beside you now. He is near, even when you cannot feel Him.
The hope we cling to after loss isn’t a hope that denies pain. It is the kind of hope that transforms it. It’s the hope of Christ Himself. The One who entered our suffering, bore our grief, and redeemed what felt unredeemable.
Hope H. Dover makes space for mothers who are parenting after pregnancy loss to honor their whole stories on the path to abundant life. She and her husband have four children, two they hold in their arms and two they carry in their hearts. When she isn’t writing, Hope enjoys adventuring with her family, baking, and attending live music events. Her book, Seeking Hope, Finding Joy: Living Abundantly After Pregnancy Loss offers encouragement for mothers navigating life after loss. Connect with Hope on her website and Instagram.
