Breaking The Silence On Pregnancy Loss And The Path To Healing With Sharna Southan
One in four women experience pregnancy loss, yet the grief remains one of the most private and unspoken sorrows. If you’ve felt isolated, carrying the secret pain of a miscarriage or stillbirth, you are not alone. This conversation delves into the profound, often traumatic, experience of pregnancy loss—an identity-shattering event where many wonder, ‘Did my loss even count?’ Join pregnancy loss practitioner Sharna Southan, who turned her own agonizing healing journey into a mission to support bereaved mothers. She shares why so many women struggle to find support, how unresolved trauma can affect your future health, and the incredible power of giving yourself permission to talk, breathe, and finally, be free. Discover the neurological impact of grief and the crucial steps to reclaim joy and wholeness after loss. I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others. Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World. — Watch the episode here Listen to the podcast here Breaking The Silence On Pregnancy Loss And The Path To Healing With Sharna Southan In this episode, we’re talking about pregnancy loss, the kind of grief that’s often not spoken about. Our guest will share that 1 out of 4 women experiences being a bereaved mom. Do you know 1 out of 4 women who are talking about it and why? What would their life look like if they were no longer carrying the secret pain and gave themselves permission to be free, talk, breathe, and let other people support them? Let’s get into this conversation. All the way from Australia, here to the show. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Not only introduce yourself, but tell us how you went from this topic to the number one podcast. Sharna Southan’s Personal Pregnancy Loss And The 1 In 4 Statistic Thank you for asking that. My name is Sharna Southan. I am a pregnancy loss practitioner and educator. Everything that I created was everything that I needed in my healing journey. It took a few years for it to eventuate, putting all the puzzle pieces together. Going through my own experience of a miscarriage, I needed support that wasn’t there. No one was talking about pregnancy loss. No one was talking about what I was going to experience through that loss. Everything that they were telling me about what my body was going to go through is completely different from what I was experiencing. I ended up Googling everything. My husband and I were trying to figure everything out. We were like, “What is happening? Why is this happening to my body? How long is this going to last?” It got to the point where I was bleeding too much and ended up being rushed to the hospital for an emergency DNC. The OB-GYN that was at the hospital was like, “Your body is recognizing that you’ve lost the pregnancy, but you’re going through contractions. It’s not completing the process itself, so we need to go through this procedure.” In my mind, I felt like I was one in a million going through this. I was like, “I’m the only woman that’s experiencing this because no one is talking about it.” What I was given was not right in terms of the aftercare. He said 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss. I was like, “If 1 in 4 pregnancies and this way, why is no one talking about it? Why do I feel like I’m the only one going through this?” I was introduced to grief quite early on in my life. My dad died when I was nineteen. It’s not that I knew how to process this type of grief, but I knew that I had to go through the process. I had to feel my feelings. I had to move through what was coming up for me. There were moments of complete numbness. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I felt like I was this shell of a human, not having anyone talk about what this experience was like. I was piecing things together for myself in my healing and doing what I felt like was right for me. It got to a point where I needed to see a psychologist. I reached out to a psychologist that I had used when my dad died and said, “I need help. I can’t do this on my own.” She supported me in terms of I’d written everything out on paper, what I’d gone through, the thoughts that went through my head through the whole experience, and the fact that I thought I was going to die. I rang my mom and said, “I’m going to die. No one can go through this, believe the way that I am, and survive.” I had viscerally believed that that was my fate. My psychologist ended up diagnosing me and saying, “You’ve experienced trauma.” I was like, “What do I do with this experience?” I was left to piece things together for myself. Transitioning From Personal Healing To Professional Support There were a few months where I was moving through my healing, going through the transitions that I felt like I needed to go through. There was this moment of clarity, like, “I need to do this for someone else. I need to be this person for someone else because I needed that person,” and then everything shifted. Not that it was a distraction, but I was then focused on, “How do I do this? How do I share what I’ve been through so that I can help another woman feel less alone?” That’s the foundation of everything that I do, even the podcast that I run, the certification that
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