Some things aren't meant to be forgotten
Today the country falls quiet.
At eleven o'clock, people stop. On high streets, in churches, around war memorials in villages like ours, there's a silence held for those who gave their lives in service. Poppies pinned to coats. Names read aloud. A generation that chose to stand for something, remembered by the generations that came after.
It matters that we do this. That once a year we refuse to let the moving-on of ordinary life erase what was lost. That we say, out loud and together, we have not forgotten.
I've been thinking about that word. Remembrance.
Because there's a quieter kind of remembering that happens all year round, with no two-minute silence to hold it.
Some of you reading this are carrying a loss the world never saw. A pregnancy that didn't hold. A heartbeat that was there and then wasn't. A due date that comes round every year and sits in your chest while everyone else carries on, unaware the day means anything at all.
I want to be careful here. The losses we honour today, lives given in service, are their own. I'm not drawing them level with anything. But I've sat with enough women to know something about how grief behaves once the world decides it's time to move on.
People stop asking. The casseroles stop coming. Conversations drift back to normal. And somewhere in all that returning-to-normal, you can be left with the strange feeling that you're supposed to be over it now. That the memory should have faded along with everyone else's attention.
It doesn't work like that. The love doesn't leave when the sympathy does.
If you've lost a baby, at any stage, by any name, you are allowed to still carry it. You're allowed to mark the dates no one else remembers. You're allowed to grieve something that was real to you even if it was invisible to the people around you. The world moving on was never a request for you to forget.
So today, while the country remembers out loud, I wanted you to know that the quiet remembering you do, the one with no ceremony and no poppy, is no less real. It's love. It doesn't need anyone else's permission to continue.
Be gentle with yourself today.
One small thing, and then I'll leave you to the day.
If you know someone over 30 in or around Witham who is trying to get pregnant, preparing to try again, or simply looking for a little more guidance and reassurance, I'll be hosting an in-person Preparing for Pregnancy Workshop on Saturday, 28th November at Spring Lodge, Witham.
Please feel free to share the details with someone who might find it helpful.
Book Your Place at the Workshop Here
Thinking of you today.
Claire x
