Grieving Journy : Finding Healing After Stillbirth

The Night I Said Hello and Goodbye to My Daughter

On September 3rd, 2025, I walked into my anatomy scan, 19 weeks and 5 days pregnant, full of quiet anticipation, eager to find out the gender of the soul coming into my womb. 1:00 pm that afternoon, my world shattered. The ultrasound technician could not find a heartbeat.

In that moment, all I could hear inside my mind was a haunting echo: “The last movements I felt last night… were her last.”

The doctors gave me three options:

• To be medically induced,

• To have a D&E procedure,

• Or to allow nature to take its course.

Every option felt unbearable, but I chose to wait. Waiting carried its own pain—walking around with my stillborn daughter in my womb. My body still carried her, but I knew her spirit had already gone.

On September 9th, 2025 (9/9/9)—the night of the lunar eclipse with the Moon in Pisces at 22:41—I gave birth to our baby girl, Journy "Blue's".

There was something deeply symbolic about that night. Spiritually, eclipses are moments of endings and beginnings, of transitions between realms. The Moon in Pisces, a sign of intuition, compassion, and release, reminded me that my daughter’s soul was always held in divine love, even as she left this world.

Her birth was both sacred and heartbreaking—a moment that felt suspended between earth and spirit.

Every day since has been different. Some days I wake up with strength. Other days I am swallowed by questions:

• What could I have done differently?

• Why wasn’t I taking better care of myself?

• What did I do to deserve this?

• Does my son blame me for losing his baby sister?

These thoughts rush in like storms. They are intrusive, overwhelming, and yet very human.

Spiritually, I’ve come to understand that grief has no timeline and no single face. It can arrive as sadness, guilt, anger, numbness, or even joy in remembering. And each of these emotions deserves to be felt, acknowledged, and released when it is ready to leave.

I am deeply grateful to the staff at Mount Sinai Hospital in York, Toronto. Their gentleness, professionalism, and compassion made an unbearable situation feel just a little more bearable.

And to my doula, Shennae. You were everything I didn’t know I needed—a hand to hold, a voice of encouragement, a shoulder to cry on, and the physical presence I thought I would be without. With my husband overseas and family obligations keeping others away, she stepped in without hesitation.

From packing her overnight bag to ensuring I ate (she even introduced me to Kingston 12 Patty Shop in Little Jamaica—highly recommend! And the veggie patty... 10/10). She poured love and care into every detail. I will never forget her willingness to walk beside me in this sacred, painful passage.

Then came the decisions I never thought I would have to make:

• What to do with my daughter’s body.

• Whether to leave her in the hospital’s care, plan a ceremony, choose burial or cremation...

No parent should ever have to decide these things for their child at any age. Yet here I was, forced into choices no heart should bear.

A Message to Other Parents

To any parent walking this path: please know, you are not alone. Whether your loss came early in pregnancy, midway, at birth or after —grief is grief. It matters. Your baby matters.

Spiritually, our babies are not gone. They live in the whispers of the wind, in the flicker of candles, in the songs that suddenly bring us to tears. Some say miscarried or stillborn children come to teach us lessons about unconditional love, about surrender, about the strength we didn’t know we had. Others say their souls often return to us, in another pregnancy or another form of presence in our lives.

What I know is this: it is okay to grieve. It is okay to laugh again. It is okay to feel joy without guilt, and sadness without shame. Grief is not a straight line—it is waves. Allow them to come. Hold them with compassion. And when you’re ready, let them pass.

Journy’s time on this earth was brief, but her impact is eternal. She is part of my story, my healing, and my heart.

To the mothers, fathers, and families carrying this silent grief: I see you. We will get through this. Not by forgetting, but by honoring. Not by rushing the healing, but by allowing it.

Because love—even love that seems too short-lived—never truly dies.