133: What Emily's Stillbirth Story Taught Me About Charging Through

I came home from a retreat in Nashville with a lot of things on my mind. But one conversation wouldn't leave me alone.

I met a woman named Emily — a birth worker, a loss mom — and she said something that stopped me cold. She said, "I chose to be a buffalo." I've lived in Buffalo my whole life. Buffaloes are everywhere I look. And somehow, I had never heard it this way.

This episode is about that conversation, what it made me realize about grief, and the honest question I've been sitting with ever since: What if the way we're trying to get through the pain is actually keeping it in us longer?

I don't say that to make you feel bad about how you've been surviving. Surviving after stillbirth is everything. But I do want to sit with you in this question, because it changed something in me — and I think it might do the same for you.

This is a solo episode about facing grief head on (not alone), why managing your pain and actually feeling it are two very different things, and how the storm you've been running from might be the very thing keeping you in it.

What you'll learn:

• The buffalo analogy and why it's the most honest picture of what grief-facing actually looks like
• Why running from your grief doesn't make it go away — it just makes it follow you underground
• How grief shows up as snapping at your partner, low-grade numbness, guilt you can't trace, and that tight feeling in your chest at the grocery store
• The real difference between surviving your grief and actually moving through it
• Why "being strong" and being brave are not the same thing — and which one actually helps you heal
• What it means to charge into the storm with support — not just willpower and suffering alone
• The honest question to sit with this week: where in your life are you going around your grief instead of through it?
• Why facing your loss doesn't mean leaving your baby behind — it's actually one of the most honoring things you can do

https://navigatingbabyloss.com/workshop

Free workshop for moms grieving stillbirth or pregnancy loss. Learn simple, trauma-informed practices to release guilt, calm the what-ifs, and honor your baby's memory with love instead of pain. Includes bonus Grief & Guilt Release Journal.

Download my FREE "Guilt and Grief Release Journal" at navigatingbabyloss.com/journal

WHERE TO FIND AND FOLLOW ME!

• Website-  https://www.jennifersenn.com
• Tik Tok-https://www.tiktok.com/@navigatingbabyloss
• Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/navigatingbabyloss/
• You Tube-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz-2MCEY5PRiF6p6VB_2lxA

Transcript

 I just got back from a retreat in Nashville. It was so amazing, and at this retreat was. It was primarily, birth workers. So they are, like lactation consultants, doulas, women who have dedicated their entire professional lives to showing up for moms in some of the hardest times of their lives.

So there's something super magical If you ever get to attend a retreat where there's just women and you're all really focusing on helping or working towards the same thing, it's really, it's super amazing. So I get to go there. . I mean, obviously when you're in a room full of birth workers, there's a lot of stories going on.

There's a lot of things happening. There's a lot of experiences, and the conversations go deep really fast. And you connect in with these women really fast because everyone there has seen some things and felt some things, and. So you get past small talk really, really quickly in these kinds of rooms, but it's so you just.

There's just nothing like it and you really just feel so full. It really reminded me that that is something I would like to create in my communities is, more of the retreat kind of experience, because I think being in a room with other moms who have experienced loss like you have is really, really special.

So. In this, um, in this retreat, I met this beautiful woman named Emily. I think she won't mind if I use her real name, and she shared her stillbirth story with me and. You know when, when your two moms who've experienced this together, it doesn't take long to just like Yeah, I know. I know. I remember. I remember.

You know, we just, we both, you have so many. Similar experiences, but completely different. So it's very, it's very interesting to connect, which I think is why I love to hear, I love to hear stories like this, um, because you don't have to explain yourself, know it. You don't have to try to make someone understand something.

You don't have to cut corners and try to make anything easier because. You, you've found someone else who has been there and you have found someone else who knows exactly what you're feeling. Even though their similar situation was different, but it was just the two of us having this real conversation and something that she's said to me.

I don't if I've ever heard it. I think I haven't ever related it to grief, but it really struck me and it stayed with me. And the saying is when a storm hits every other animal runs away from it to get out of it, but a buffalo charges right through it. Because they know that's the quickest way to get through the storm is to go right through it.

And they're resilient and their coat is made for it, and they just do it. And she said to me, I chose to be a buffalo. I, I made myself grieve this at the, the hardest level because I chose to be a buffalo. And I thought that was so amazing because I'm from Buffalo. I have, there's buffaloes emblems on everywhere I look, but I've never really thought about it this way.



And so it really made me. Think a lot about it. I thought about it during the time we were there, and then certainly since we've been back, and the very first day I got back in my inbox from, I don't know, someone I follow was a marketer. Had the exact same phrase. So it really made me think that I need to dig into this a little bit and I needed to bring this here for you in case this little, um, analogy of a buffalo running into the storm is helpful because it really made me think, um.

You know, what if, what if we did that? What if we decided to go into the storm instead of trying to find every way around it? What if we did that? Um, when, and, and also when Emily shared that with me, she. Said I chose to be a buffalo. She wasn't saying she was fearless, she wasn't saying it was easy. She wasn't saying, she woke up one day and just decided to power through her pain with willpower and that every day she was gonna, no, what she was saying was this, is that she was.

Making a choice not to run away, and she chose to face what was in front of her and to walk in that storm instead of walking away from it to let herself feel. What was real, instead of looking for a different way not to feel, and it's a very different thing from being strong. You know how it is. If you're a lost mama, you know, everyone says, oh, you're so strong.

Oh my gosh, you just have so much strength and we don't want it. No one wants this kind of strength, but there's a difference between strength and bravery. And what Emily did by choosing to face this grief head on was brave. And I really think that matters because the thing that most of us do, and I say most of us because I include myself in this 100%, is that when pain shows up for us, real heavy, gut wrenching pain.

We try to manage it. We try to take it out. We try to minimize it. We try to get away from it. We stay busy. We pour ourselves into our work or our kids. I mean, that was me for sure. Um, we, we distract ourselves with anything that keeps our hi hands and our minds busy. And occupies so that we aren't thinking about this pain.

We let this distraction be whatever is right in front of us. We make schedules, we make plans, we fill the calendar. We, we really are groomed, I think, to tell ourselves, and people are very happy to tell us that. Time heals all wounds. Time will heal all wounds, and we think that eventually if enough good things happen.

It will wash out the bad, the bad things will start to fade away. And so maybe, maybe you see a therapist for a little while, maybe you join a support group or read all the grief books, trying to figure out which ones are gonna make sense and none of that works quite the way we hoped it would. So we just keep going day after day after day.

So I wanna also be clear that none of this is wrong. None of this is wrong. Surviving is not nothing surviving when you've lost a baby, when you've walked out of a hospital without the person you went in there for. Surviving is everything and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. But I do wanna ask you something because I've been thinking about this all week, and so I wanna ask this to you.

What if the way we're trying to get through the pain is actually keeping it in you longer? What if the pain is actually prolonged because of the way that you're trying to get rid of it? So I don't know. I wanna know from you if you've ever thought about that, if that's ever been like. Anything that you have experienced.



What if all the managing and minimizing and waiting, what if that's not protecting us the way we think it is? So this is something I've noticed in my own life and the lives of the women that I get to work with, is that grief that doesn't get dealt with doesn't go away. So that's the other side of this is like imagining and they're like, no, I don't wanna go head in into grieving.

And I just, I wanna try to put it away. I just wanna see if it'll just go away. But what I know for sure is it never does. It always shows up somewhere else. It just goes underground and it shows up as you snapping over your partner about something small and then you feel terrible about it, or your kids.

That was me too. I would snap at my kids and I knew instantly that it was nothing about them, but it shows up as a low, like, like this underlying sadness that just is always there. It's just making you like numb. It's always in the background. It shows up as guilt that you can't trace back to anything specific, but it's just, it just feels better than to not have the guilt for some reason, but it follows you everywhere.

It shows up in that tight feeling in your chest when you see a pregnant woman at the grocery store or when you're scrolling and when you get an announcement to a baby shower in the mail. And how about the time when you go the whole day and you haven't thought about your baby, and then all of a sudden you feel guilty about it?

\ That guilt is really awful too. So the pain will find its way out one way or the other. And the longer you go without really looking at it, the more it costs you.

So back to my conference, when my friend Emily told me that she chose to be a buffalo in the midst of her stillbirth, in the midst of her grief, she chose that. It really hit me because buffaloes don't charge into the storm because it doesn't hurt. They know that. But they charge into it because they've figured it out.

That running away from it makes it last longer. Still gonna be painful, maybe not as painful, but it's gonna last longer. And so when you run from a storm, you stay in it, you're moving in the same direction that it's going. You're in the rain, in the wind, in the cold for as long as the storm keeps going,

but when you decide to go right straight through it, you come out of the other side faster and the storm will still happen. The storm is still real. You still get wet. You still feel the wind, but you don't have to stay there forever. And that's what I want you to sit with for a minute, because I know that the idea of facing your grief head on feels terrifying.

I know that I am not dismissing that. And maybe you're afraid that if you let yourself really feel all of it, you won't be able to come back from it. You'll go so deep into the pain that you'll never come back and you'll lose yourself in it. Maybe you're afraid that facing it means that somehow you'll have to move on and leave your baby behind.

That is terrifying too. That also kept me stuck for a long time, that letting yourself feel it and then letting yourself breathe again means leaving them behind.

Or maybe you've just been carrying this for so long, maybe your loss happened eight years ago and you're just, you've done this for so long, you don't even know who you would be if you were to release this kinda grief.

So it just becomes part of you, the sadness and the guilt and the low grade heaviness of this feeling, and you've just adapted to it. You don't know who you are without it anymore. And I get it. I get all of that. I really do. But here's another question. Not facing it is scary because it, of course it is.

But is it scarier than what you're already living? Is facing your pain and taking the time to really per allow yourself, giving yourself permission to sit in your grief and to allow yourself to feel that pain. Knowing that feeling this pain is going to get you to the other side?

All of these awful memories that you have, is it actually worse than what you're living right now? If you had support in a safe space, and were able to do this in a systemized matter. Is that worse than living another year of this self-doubt that you're living now. Is it worth another year of your relationships eroding in front of you?

\ And is it worth another year of waking up feeling that weight on your chest every single day and not knowing how to get rid of it you've forgotten. Why it's there. You've felt it for so long. Is it worse than sitting down and not being able to imagine what your future is because you're too afraid to dream

maybe I want another baby. Maybe I, maybe I would dare to try one more time. I think the storm you're running from has been following you for a long time. Emily didn't charge into her grief alone. She had support. She had people who could hold the space for her when she was walking this grief head on. She had frameworks for getting through it, not just a decision to suffer. And that distinction is everything.

So there's a difference between saying, I'm gonna stop running and I'm gonna do this alone and just feel awful until I feel better, or I'm gonna stop running and I'm gonna get the right kind of help to actually walk through this. One means survival and the other is movement. And that's what Emily's story made me think about

what is the support that I'm offering women? I work with, is it really helping them charge in or helping them manage because management is not the same as relief. Managing your grief keeps you functioning, and that's not nothing. But it doesn't make it lighter. It just helps you carry it more quietly.

Real relief. The kind where you actually dig in, you start to breathe easier, where you can loosen the guilt, where that guilt feeling and that thought comes up, but you know exactly what to do to take it back out and you can talk about your baby. Using their name and feel all of the feelings that you want to feel when you think of that baby.

That's gonna make the difference. But you can only do it when you have someone beside you every step of the way because it is scary to do alone. So that conversation with Emily made me really look at the work I do and how to make it more effective. Because you've been in this storm long enough.

What is bringing any of this bringing up for you? What are you thinking of when you imagine yourself being at Buffalo? Walking through the storm? Not alone. Not alone. They travel in herds. So what if you weren't alone going through the storm, but you just knew this is what I have to do to heal from this awful tragedy that I didn't ask for?

I want you to sit with this analogy and think about this this week, and you don't have to share it with anyone, but just let yourself really, really think about this. Where are the places in your life that you're running away from your grief right now? What part of your grief are you going around instead of through what feelings have you been managing instead of facing.

And what truth about your loss have you been quietly sidestepping? Because looking at it directly is just too hard, and you don't have to change any of it today. You don't have to make this decision today, but just notice the areas in your life where you've been running away, because noticing how it starts.

Is the first step towards choosing the way Emily chose to stop running, to turn around, face the storm, gather your herd, and I promise facing it doesn't mean that you'll ever forget your baby because that's not possible. In fact, it will be more honoring them than anything. And it's just saying, what happened to us is real and I'm gonna live, let myself live in the aftermath of it, instead of just survival.

I want you to know that I'm here, I'm taking on a few more new private coaching clients, so this might be the perfect moment for you. If so, I'd love to hear from you.

The time is now for you to stop suffering. Suffering is optional and if you are ready, there is help. There is real help and I am willing to face this storm with you every single bit of it because I've been there.

And so just let's have a conversation. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for being someone who shows up even when showing up is hard.

Even when listening to a conversation like this takes more out of you than anyone around you probably understands and you're not broken for still feeling this. You are not weak for caring grief. You're a mom who loved so deeply that the storm is still moving through you. And you are allowed to charge straight through it.

Your baby is with you in that too, every step of the way. So until next week, I'll be back next week. Take good care of yourself and please reach out if any part of this seems like something that you wanna explore a little bit more. All right, I'll talk to you soon.