Therapist Explains Grief, Silence and Healing After Infant Loss
October marks Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month and SIDS Awareness Month, two causes that rarely get the space they deserve in our Latino community.
As a Latina therapist and sister who has lived through loss, I’ve come to see that grief doesn’t only break hearts, it cracks open the silence our culture often holds around grief.
When my brother and his wife lost their baby, I still remember the phone call from my mother. The crying. The confusion. The kind of silence that fills a room even when no one is there. People wanted to help, so they said what we’ve all heard before:
“Dios sabe por qué pasan las cosas.”
“Be strong.”
“Ahora está con Dios.”
Those words came from love, but they also carried weight. Beneath them was that old cultural message many of us know too well: Don’t cry too loud. Don’t ask why. Just know that he is in a better place now. Be grateful. Keep going.
But how do you “keep going” when everything in you has stopped?
The Stigma of Loss
In our culture, motherhood and parenthood are sacred. They are symbols of strength, identity, and purpose. So when a pregnancy or infant is lost, that image shatters. The silence that follows can feel like punishment.
Mothers often carry guilt and shame, wondering what they did wrong. Fathers carry their own heartbreak quietly, unsure how to show it. The pressure to appear strong pushes both parents to hide their pain instead of reaching out for help.
In our Latino community, suffering is even seen as a test of faith, and that belief can deepen the wound. When people say things like “It was meant to be” or “God needed another angel,” they might not realize how that can sound like blame. It turns a sacred loss into something to endure, not something to feel.
That is how grief becomes another form of trauma, a private pain wrapped in silence.
Trauma Through the Therapist’s Lens
As a trauma therapist, I help people name what their bodies already know. When grief is silenced, it doesn’t disappear. It settles inside. It somaticizes. The body remembers what we cannot explain. The tight chest, the sleepless nights, the sudden tears that come from nowhere. That is your body holding the grief that never had space to breathe.
This is called disenfranchised grief, when loss isn’t publicly acknowledged or supported. It is what happens when a mother’s tears are met with “You’ll have another baby,” or when a father’s sadness is ignored completely. You can’t heal what you’re not allowed to name.
Faith can be a two-sided coin. It can comfort us, offering hope and connection to something greater. But when it is used to rush the process, “God has a plan, move on,” it bypasses the very feelings that need to be witnessed.
Healing requires both faith and feeling. You can pray, and you can cry. You can believe in divine purpose and still say, “This hurts.”
The Personal Side of Grief
When my brother and sister-in-law went through their loss, it broke something in all of us. It hurt seeing them hurt. I knew the theory, the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
I also knew the trauma responses: the numbness that shields you from the initial shock, the hypervigilance that keeps you awake at night, the way your body braces for bad news even when nothing is wrong.
But none of that prepares you for watching someone you love live it.
As a therapist, I understand that grief is not linear. It doesn’t follow a straight path from pain to peace. It circles back, pauses, and sometimes feels never-ending. Some days bring clarity, others reopen the wound.
People grieve in different ways. Some cry until their body gives out. Others go quiet. Some throw themselves into work or caretaking because it is the only thing that feels stable. These are all normal trauma responses, the nervous system’s way of protecting us when the world suddenly stops feeling safe.
There is no “right” way to grieve. What matters most is that grief has somewhere to go, that it is witnessed, not silenced.
One night, I told my brother, “You don’t have to be strong right now. You just have to be human.” That was the shift, the moment we stopped trying to fix the grief and learned to hold it together. Messy, raw, and real.
A Path Forward
Pregnancy and infant loss are not personal failures. They are profound heartbreaks that deserve space, compassion, and community. We can honor faith without using it to silence emotion. We can bring God into the room and allow our tears to fall if that brings a sense of connection, comfort, or release. Because faith and feeling can coexist.
To the parents who have lost a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth, or SIDS, please know this: your pain is sacred. Your love is eternal. You are not alone.
To the families and loved ones walking beside them, listen without trying to fix. Sit in the silence with them. Sometimes presence says more than words ever could.
We break the cycle of silence when we let both our spirituality and our humanity coexist. So this month, light a candle. Say their names. Tell their stories.
And when we speak their names out loud, we don’t just remember their life, we give our grief a voice. And that is where healing begins.
About the Author:
Cynthia Flores is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Speaker, and Host of the Heal & Manifest Podcast. She supports First Generation Cycle Breakers in healing generational trauma, building self-worth, and creating emotionally healthy relationships through a culturally rooted, trauma-informed lens.
Instagram: @cynthiafloreslmft Website: www.cynthiagflores.com
