Finding yourself again after baby loss: what I discovered
Finding yourself again after baby loss feels impossible to many mothers. You have changed. Deep inside. And somewhere along the way you also lose yourself — not just the version of you from before the loss, but also the trust in who you still are.
A few years ago I discovered something I never expected: a way back to myself. Not toward the woman shaped by loss and survival, but toward who I had always been in essence.
What baby loss does to your identity
After losing Tom and Tim, and later also Jasmijn, much changed in me. That makes sense. You don't go through something like this and stay the same person.
Yet it felt as if I barely recognised myself anymore. Making decisions became difficult. My energy felt different. And I no longer knew who I was apart from the loss. I was mostly "the mother who lost her child." But I also felt: there must be more to me than just that grief.
Finding yourself again after baby loss: what helped me
When Human Design came into my life, it didn't feel like a trick or a label. It felt like recognition. As if someone was putting words to something that had always been present deep inside.
I discovered I am a Manifesting Generator — someone with energy, ideas and movement. Someone who creates and comes into her own best when things flow. And even in the period when I thought I was broken, that core was still in me. Under the grief. Under the surviving.
Human Design didn't help me become someone else. It helped me remember who I already was.
What I now see in women after baby loss
What I see more and more often is that women after stillbirth or baby loss don't just lose their child — they also lose a piece of themselves. They no longer know what they feel, what they need, how to make choices, or who they have become.
Yet I believe that beneath those layers of grief there is still a core present. A part of you that has not disappeared, even when it sometimes feels that way. Finding yourself again after baby loss is not about going back to before. That version no longer exists. It is about finding your way back to who you are now.
You are allowed to move, create and live
For me, healing was never about returning to the woman I was before. What I found was a way to understand myself again. To look more gently at my energy and my emotions. And to realise that my way of moving through loss was not wrong.
I was allowed to move. Create. Live. And take my children with me — not despite them, but together with them.
Ready to find yourself again? Explore the Book Stilborn or start with a free guided moment.
