Strangely, I’m writing this from the same hotel we stayed in exactly a year ago. We came here for my son’s birthday, to the safari hotel he had asked to visit, and he was completely unaware of what his mum and dad were silently carrying alongside him.
Because a year ago, as we celebrated his birthday, we had just found out that we had lost our baby.
We kept it together for him. We smiled, celebrated his birthday and went away as planned. Looking back, one of the things I’m most grateful for is that he knew nothing about the devastation happening around him. He simply got to have his birthday, exactly as a six-year-old should. My husband and I silently carried the grief between us instead.
In the days that followed, the pain and trauma completely took over. For around 48 hours leading up to my surgery, I experienced the excruciating physical pain of losing our baby. At the same time, I was desperately hoping I could still make it to surgery because I knew it might be our only opportunity to find out whether our baby was a boy or a girl, and potentially get some answers as to why another pregnancy had failed.
It was our fifth loss, and I think that weekend became the beginning of something for me. I wouldn't call it healing, because I was nowhere near that point yet. If anything, I had reached rock bottom.
A year later, somehow, we're back in the same hotel. My son is another year older, my husband is beside me, and I'm now pregnant with our daughter, with around nine weeks left until we meet her.
It would be very easy to look at those two snapshots and make this a story about finally being pregnant again. A story with a happy ending. But when I reflect on the last year, that isn't actually the biggest change I see.
The biggest change is me.
After our loss, I became completely focused on getting myself ready to try again. I threw myself back into work and wanted to fix everything. I wanted to understand my body, improve my health and prepare myself for another pregnancy. What I didn't really want to do was stop, because stopping meant I would have to feel everything that had just happened.
Eventually, though, my body stopped playing along.
Things that had once felt completely normal began to feel unsafe. Leaving my house became difficult. Being away from my son made me uncomfortable. Social situations became overwhelming and I started seeing danger everywhere. Part of me knew my reactions were extreme, but knowing that didn't make the panic disappear.
Home became my safe place. Being close to my son made me feel secure, and my husband became my crutch through so much of that period. Thankfully, he understood what was happening even when I didn't completely understand it myself. He never forced me to hurry up or get over it. He just stayed beside me while I tried to work through it.
With Christmas approaching, social commitments began stacking up and I felt a duty to attend them. So I did. Looking back now, I can see just how much I was struggling internally during that time. My boundaries were constantly being pushed, conversations triggered me and things that somebody else might have forgotten five minutes later could stay with me for days.
Nobody had bad intentions. They just couldn't see what was happening inside me.
There were social situations where I completely froze, which is an awful feeling when you're surrounded by other people. You're physically standing in the room, but internally something has shut down. You want to speak, leave, act normally or join in, but you can't seem to make yourself do any of those things. I was grieving, frightened and exhausted while simultaneously trying to convince the outside world, and probably myself, that I was coping.
Then a new year arrived, and with it came another loss.
During the first week of January, I had a chemical pregnancy — a very early pregnancy that ended just days after I found out I was pregnant. Another positive test, another little flicker of hope and another ending.
There's something particularly difficult about New Year when you've been struggling with fertility. Everywhere you look, people are talking about fresh starts, new goals, healthy habits and everything they're going to achieve that year. When you've spent years quietly hoping this will be the year we have another baby, January can feel less like a fresh start and more like another reminder of time passing.
By then, I was tired. I wanted to be healthy and I desperately wanted to feel happy again, but part of me also wanted to give up on fertility altogether. I couldn't keep living my life permanently preparing for the next pregnancy, the next positive test or potentially the next loss.
So instead, I started focusing on me.
My body still didn't feel right after the pregnancy we'd lost the previous September, and mentally I knew something needed to change too. I started paying closer attention to my nutrition and metabolic health, something that had already become important to me over the years, but I also started understanding my nervous system in a way I never had before.
I began looking at sleep, stress, boundaries and the environments I was putting myself in. I noticed which people made me feel safe and which situations left me completely depleted. I started understanding why I was reacting to things the way I was, rather than constantly judging myself for those reactions.
Most importantly, I stopped believing that everything uncomfortable was something I simply needed to push through.
Slowly, I began creating a life that felt safer to live in. I became more protective of my peace, more comfortable saying no and more aware of what my body was trying to tell me. From the outside, perhaps my life became a little smaller for a while. To me, it didn't feel smaller. It felt safer. There is a difference.
Looking back now, maybe my new year didn't begin on January 1st at all. Maybe it began here, in this hotel, on my son's birthday, at one of the lowest points of my life. Because although I couldn't see it at the time, that was the point when something eventually had to change.
A year later, I still carry painful memories. I still get triggered and I still have moments where fear takes over. Being pregnant again hasn't erased what happened before. In fact, pregnancy after loss has asked me to use so many of the things I've learned over the past year. There have been hospital visits, anxious waits, moments where movements feel different and times when my mind wants to take me straight back to the pregnancies we lost.
But my life does look different now. And so do I.
My relationship with food has changed. My understanding of my metabolic health has changed. I understand my nervous system differently. I protect my home, my time and my peace more fiercely. I appreciate slower mornings, family time and the ordinary moments that perhaps I once rushed through. I've learned that boundaries aren't about shutting people out; sometimes they're simply about keeping enough of yourself available for the things that matter most.
I don't believe everything happens for a reason. I would never choose what happened to us, and I would never choose to lose our babies so that I could learn something about myself. Some experiences don't need to be turned into a blessing in order for us to find meaning in the person we become afterwards.
But I do believe we're allowed to decide what we build from the things that happen to us.
And somewhere in that rebuilding, Her Beautiful Life began.
Not because my life suddenly became perfect, but because I started to understand that a beautiful life can exist alongside the things that have broken your heart. Grief and joy don't have to cancel each other out. You can remember what you've lost while loving what you have. You can carry painful memories while teaching your body that the present moment can be safe.
And perhaps healing isn't about returning to the person you were before any of it happened.
For a long time, I think part of me was waiting for her. Waiting to feel like myself again. Waiting to become more social again, less anxious, less particular about the things that make me feel safe. Waiting for life to feel the way it used to.
But sitting here a year later, I don't think she's coming back.
And I don't think she's supposed to.
The woman sitting in this hotel today has lived through things that the woman who came before her hadn't. She knows herself differently. She understands her body differently. She values calm differently. She loves differently. She notices the small things more. And although there are parts of the old me I will always miss, I'm beginning to really like the life this version of me is creating.
One year later, I'm sitting in the same hotel. My son is celebrating another birthday, my husband is still beside me and our daughter is moving inside me as I write this.
It isn't a neat ending to the story. I don't think grief gives us those.
It's simply a moment where I can look backwards and finally see how far I've travelled.
Over the next few weeks, I'll also be sharing my free nervous system guide. It's a collection of some of the tools, practices and things I've personally used over the last year to help create more balance and safety in my life. It isn't a guide to fixing grief, because I don't believe grief needs fixing.
It's about learning how to live alongside what you've been through, while slowly making space for life again.
And maybe that's what healing looks like for me now.