✨Loss In All Its Forms, Which We Face As Women

Loss

Loss is the state of being separated from someone or something that mattered to you, whether through death, change, or absence. It can stir up a multitude of emotions in us - from sadness, grief. numbness, anger, guilt, exhaustion, confusion, anxiety......

The Anatomy of Loss as a Woman

Every other day, I encounter Loss, not only as a mother myself who was on a long fertility journey, but also in my work with the amazing women I work with who are on the rollercoaster journey towards motherhood. Their path is full of ups and downs, births and deaths, beginnings and endings. Some of these passings are the little ones who never made it earthside either through miscarriage, stillbirth, failed IVF cycles, adoption journeys that didn’t unfold as hoped. Each one carries its own grief, its own feeling of loss in the body.

This loss can drop us deep into the darkness of grief and slowly, over time, back into the light, so that we can learn the beautiful lesson that they are still with us. We feel them in our body. They live in our cells. We will always be connected to them.

But beyond these obvious heartbreaks, women experience loss far more often than we realise. It lives quietly in our body, our life stages, our relationships, and our identities. Loss is woven into the very fabric of womanhood.

Loss in the Body

Even at a reproductive level, loss is constant. Not every egg makes the leap from ovary to fallopian tube despite great efforts by the fallopian tube to carch them. Some fall into the pelvic cavity and dissolve back into the body. A tiny ending, unnoticed but real.

Every menstrual cycle is a mini-death—the end of a possibility, the closing of another chapter. And yet, as always, it is followed by rebirth. The cycle begins again. This rhythm of death and renewal is ancient, it's primal, and deeply feminine.

And when our cycles stop completely, we are reborn once more—into our Queen time, our sovereignty. We step out of the role of constant nurturer and turn that nurturing inward, to ourselves, creating boundaries, learning to say NO ! Another ending, another beginning.

Loss in Birth

Birth itself carries its own form of loss and one you don't even think of. In one way you are so looking forward to meeting your baby, but when your baby leaves your body, a part of you is gone too. The closeness, the movements, the shared energy field suddenly separates. You love them fiercely, yet your body grieves the emptiness. Two beings learning how to be apart, each with their own needs and their own rhythms. Post partum is such an important phase of mothering that is very often overlooked in the current day.

Loss in Motherhood

As our children grow, loss becomes a companion. The apron strings stretch every other day, sometimes gently, sometimes abruptly.

When my boys started school, I was delighted at the prospect of having a few hours to myself, an undisturbed cuppa, but I was also heartbroken. I cried for days as they finally let go of my apron strings and entered another world.

But as they were growing, each new boundary stretched the strings a little more: “You can go as far as the end of the driveway.” “Okay, you can go as far as the neighbour’s house.” “Alright, you can go to the top of the road.” And before you know it, they’re up in the local Spar buying chicken rolls (true story) !!!

Every stretch brings a pang of grief and a pang of protectiveness. You’re torn between letting them go and keeping them safe.

Secondary school arrives. Another milestone. Another letting go and you would think that I would have copped on to myself at this stage. I found myself at home, blubbering, because my babies were growing up even bigger and didn’t need me in the same way anymore. Even collecting their Junior and Leaving Cert results had me in a heightened state of teary tenderness, at the back of the school hall, trying to hold myself together so they wouldn’t be mortified.

This is the evolution of loss as a woman, as a mother. No matter their age, it is hard to loosen that protective grip. Hard to let them step into the world without you as their shield. But if they can move forward into this independentness, it means you have done a very good job of raising them.

The Deepest Loss

And then there is the loss that shakes your very core, the loss of a child through miscarriage, stillbirth, failed IVF, or any traumatic ending. This grief is cavernous and deep. It demands to be acknowledged. It asks for time, gentleness, and space until you can finally come out the other side, into the light. It asks you to nurture your body, mind, and soul. It brings you into a space of inner protectiveness.

With time, healing comes—not by forgetting because you never forget, but by integration.

Menopause

After I had written this blog post and posted it live, it just came to me, how the end of my childbearing years gave me a huge sense of loss too. Even though I knew I wasn't going to have any more children, it still felt big. I guess, it also heralded that feeling that I am in the next stage of my life, and hence getting that bit older. I had to sit with these ideas and put a positive slant on them.

Being in my "Moonpause", although rocky starting off with insomnia, some panic attacks, some hot flushes, I decided to change my perception of menopause, and everything changed. Coming into my menopause made me turn inwards, nourish myself more, de-stress, slow down a little (well that was due to the lack of sleep !) because I realised that my symptoms were the result of imbalances in my lifestyle that needed to be addressed. The more I was stressed, the worse my symptoms were. I decided to embrace my menopause, so when my menstrual cycle stopped, the rollercoaster I was on stopped too. Stress makes this transition so much more difficult. Ladies I have been working with, through Reflexology, don't experience these major symptoms.,

Menopause is an amazing time because you're now reclaiming your life, your sovereignity, your sexuality and your boundaries. Saying no when things don't align with you, is your power. Your intuition is heightened. It's a time fof freedom..... enjoy !

A Closing: Integrating Loss Through the Body

Loss doesn’t just live in the mind or the heart—it lives in the body. It settles into the breath, the pelvis, the womb space, the nervous system. And while time softens the edges, true healing often asks for something deeper: a way to move the grief, to let it be witnessed, to let it shift.

This is where my work as a Soulful/Grief Doula and Kundalini Magnetic Resonance Therapy practitioner comes in. In KMRT, being a trauma informed modality, it allows us to work gently and somatically—using breathwork, and intuitive somatic movement to help the body to integrate and release what it has been holding. Grief that has been tucked into the hips, the diaphragm, the womb, the heart, the throat and the shoulders, slowly begins to loosen. The body remembers how to exhale again. How to open. Reclaiming your identity again.

Through somatic breathwork and somatic movement, we create space for the loss to integrate fully. Not bypassing it. Not pushing it away. But allowing the loss to be honoured, felt, and transformed in the body. Women often tell me they leave feeling lighter, clearer, more connected to themselves—like something inside them has finally been given permission to soften.

If you feel called to explore this work, or if your body is telling you that it’s time to release what you’ve been carrying, you’re welcome to step into a KMRT session with me.

You can learn more or book through the Kundalini Magnetic Resonance Therapy here

I’m here for you, every little baby step of the way.

Catherine 🌹