Jessica Malmberg Psychotherapy

It is such an unknown for parents -
wondering how they will feel when they hold their baby after the loss of their baby or child.

It takes so much courage to face this place.

Many parents feel relief, love, joy with the next child’s birth.

They also feel fear, sadness, and overwhelm with this new life. They feel love and grief for their child who died.

What is needed here mostly is support and acceptance for all of it.

This birth brings the whole round of the cycle of life and death we are all in. We love with our whole hearts and we also lose with our whole hearts. How do we walk this path?

To truly be with all of this, we get to messy places. We fall apart. We get back up. It is not organized and straightforward.

It is all over the place. And they deserve support and acceptance as they go through it.

What many parents experience here is learning to allow this flow. They learn that they are not weak or immature for needing to feel amazing happiness and deep sorrow at the same time. To allow that they need a break to go cry in the bathroom, and that afterwards they can then go make dinner. It’s amazing what they are capable of feeling and moving through. Day after day.

They are building the muscles needed to live a life that asks so much of us.

To love. To love even when we don’t know the future.

It is such an honor to walk beside these parents as they take these steps. It is a beautiful thing.

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The body remembers, all your loss, all your heartache

We offer a space to bring this heartache, this confusion, all your body has been through.

I’ve been wanting to create a space like this for years - just for this losses of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, TFMR, infant loss. For your body to be honored, for your story to be heard.

No one should have to carry this loss alone. October 10th, 1pm to 3pm Revolution Yoga, 510 Lewis Rd. Santa Rosa, Ca

Being in circle and guided by experts in grief, perinatal health and yoga,
Can offer a place of rest, healing and community.

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Grief lives in the body, and having someone who knows about this, who knows pregnant and postpartum bodies and aching hearts, guide you through grounding poses, through breath, honoring your love and your sorrow, is a beautiful and needed thing.

I am so happy to work with Lyla Moore, prenatal yoga and doula, in this circle for tending the hearts and bodies of those who have gone through perinatal loss.

Any stage of loss. Could be 5 weeks or 50 years ago. We are here for you, and welcome your broken hearts.

I know there is no choice about being brave. One simply learns it. We honor how hard it can be to just take the next step in life.

This circle is for being in the presence of people who truly understand the depth of what you are walking.

And for being with the ache in the lungs, in the heart, in the belly, and tending these places.

Tending to the Heart: Yoga for Perinatal Grief
In person in Santa Rosa, CA
October 10th, 1pm-3pm
Revolution Yoga - 510 Lewis Rd. Santa Rosa

Tickets at Revolution Yoga under events - or go the link in the Bio

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It is so important to honor the winter of our hearts.

After your baby dies, it’s so normal to not be able to be inspired by beauty and music and fun.

Those things hurt.

If planting flowers doesn’t feel right, then wait. You don’t need to force it right now.

If listening to sad songs feels just right, honor that.

Your heart has its seasons too.

It needs its time of quiet and rest. It is not the time for spring shoots and fragrance and ease.

It’s a hard time, a time to go within and let it be quiet, let it do its mournful work.

When the time is right, you will know.

You may find yourself humming a tune without thinking about it. It’s nothing to force, but something to notice.

I wish you room and support and honor in this time of winter.

There is nothing like dropping in with a mom or parent who has lost a baby or pregnancy. Being immediately understood. Not having to explain how deep it hurts, why you are different than you used to be.
The heart relaxes, as not only the hurt but the LOVE you have for your baby is taken in and honored and known.
Walking the path of loss is really hard. We are designed to be in village, to be known and supported through it. Not all alone. This is why I’m forming a weekly online group where your love and sorrow can be witnessed, known, held together in a small group where the alchemy of grief will create connection, wisdom, a path for walking this touch and deep road. Being honored, witnessed and appreciated for your broken heart, your living heart, is an experience that is so healing. I hope you will join us. More info on my site, link in the bio

I Carry Your Heart With Me (I Carry It In)
Song by
E.E. Cummings


i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

May this poem comfort you and give you a path for loving all your life.

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When we are in a deep place of sorrow,
In the wake of losing a pregnancy, a child or a partner or anyone close to you,

We get slowed down.
We are heavy and quiet
and it’s hard to keep up with the frenetic pace of modern life.

And there is a beauty in this.
A chance to hear the birds and watch them for longer than you usually might.
There is an opening to smell the grasses,
To notice the change of moisture in the air.

All these elements we notice
Are also there for us,
With us in the bigger picture of things.

This is a gift of grieving. 
Seeing ourselves in a great network of things.
That there is so much life around us
To help us hold the death or loss we are feeling.
Not to pop us out of it,
But to be WITH it, with support.

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When your child dies before you it feels like the whole universe is upside down.

Because you are so attached to them in heart and body, it feels like there is no order anymore, and if there isn’t enough support for you, you can really feel like you are on the outside of the movements and rhythm of the entire cosmos.

This isn’t because you don’t deserve a place here anymore.

When it comes to big sorrow our culture really doesn’t have the elders, ground and practices that we know in our bones, to lean on when we go through such a big loss.

We don’t keen together. We don’t have a tradition of deep support of community through loss. We don’t have substantial rituals that guides the sorrow as a community.

If you had these things, you might know that it is not that you are outcast and floating,
But that your heart is broken and that you need support and guidance through a time of the explosion of your world.

You still belong here. You still belong to the trees and the ocean, to the moon at night and the sun in the day. To your circle of friends, and family.

May you feel the connection, care and help that you absolutely deserve through this time.

Do you want to join me for a grief-tending group that meets weekly and builds this road together? DM me or follow the link in the bio.