You don't have to move on to move forward

[This article is for general information and education only. Evergreen Three is not a healthcare provider or qualified mental health professional, and this content should not be considered medical or psychological advice. If you need personalised support, please speak with your GP or a qualified healthcare professional.

Grief research describes common patterns, but it cannot explain every parent’s experience. There is no single correct way to remember your baby or adapt to their loss.]

What modern grief research teaches us about healing after the loss of a baby

“Will I ever get to a point where I can let my baby go?”

It is a question many bereaved parents ask, even if they do not say it out loud. Sometimes the pressure comes from within. Sometimes it comes from the people around us through comments such as “you need to move on”, “it is time to let go” or “your baby would want you to be happy”.

These messages often come from a place of care, but they reflect an older idea about grief. For many years, healthy grieving was understood as gradually detaching from the person who had died so that emotional energy could be invested elsewhere. Today, many grief researchers think about adaptation differently. The goal is not to forget your baby or leave them behind. It is to learn how to keep living while maintaining a different kind of relationship with them.

From letting go to staying connected

In the 1990s, researchers Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman introduced the concept of continuing bonds. Their work challenged the assumption that healthy grieving required people to sever their emotional connection with the person who had died.

They observed that bereaved people often continued to think about, speak to and include the person who had died in their lives. Rather than automatically treating these connections as a problem, they suggested that an ongoing bond could be a normal part of adapting to loss.

For parents whose baby has died, that bond may take many forms. It might include saying your baby’s name, keeping photographs or ultrasound images nearby, marking their birthday, holding a keepsake, writing to them or including them in family conversations. For some parents, the connection is more private. They may simply think about their baby as they move through everyday life.

None of this necessarily means that a parent is refusing to accept what has happened. It can simply mean that their baby remains part of their family and their sense of self. The relationship has changed, but it has not disappeared.

Moving forward can include grief

Continuing a bond with your baby does not mean living only in the past. Another influential framework, the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement, helps explain how people can remain connected to someone who has died while also rebuilding their lives.

Researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut proposed that grieving often involves moving between two different kinds of experience. At times, attention is directed towards the loss itself. A person may cry, remember, long for what should have been or feel the full weight of the absence. At other times, attention shifts towards the practical work of living. This might include returning to work, spending time with friends, caring for other children, making decisions or planning for the future.

This movement is sometimes described as oscillation. It does not mean a person is grieving inconsistently. It reflects the fact that no one can focus on grief all the time. People naturally move between confronting the loss and taking breaks from it while adjusting to a changed life.

This helps explain why a parent might feel devastated in the morning and laugh at something later that day. It also explains why a period of feeling relatively steady can be followed by a sudden wave of grief. These shifts are not evidence that someone is moving backwards. They are common features of bereavement.

Why this matters after baby loss

Baby loss has some particular features that make the idea of continuing bonds especially relevant. A relationship with a baby often begins long before birth. It may develop through pregnancy, anticipation, physical changes, scans, choosing a name, feeling movement and imagining a shared future.

When a baby dies, parents are not only grieving the baby they knew. They may also be grieving the life they expected to have with them. Birthdays, first words, family holidays, school years and countless ordinary moments may already have had a place in the parent’s mental picture of the future.

This means the relationship cannot be measured only by the number of days or months a baby lived. Attachment may have formed through care, hope, protection, expectation and love. For some parents, recognising this can be important because baby loss is often minimised by others, particularly when the loss occurred early in pregnancy or when there were few shared memories.

Maintaining a connection with a baby does not prevent a parent from rebuilding their life. Remembering and adapting are not competing goals. A parent can miss their baby and still laugh. They can have another child and continue to love the baby who died. They can experience moments of happiness without betraying their grief.

Moving forward does not have to mean moving on.

A more useful way to think about healing

The phrase “moving on” suggests that the person who died must be left behind. For many bereaved parents, that idea feels both impossible and unnecessary.

“Moving forward” offers a different way to understand healing. It allows the baby to remain part of the parent’s story while recognising that life continues to change. The focus is not on ending the relationship. It is on finding a form that can exist within the reality of the loss.

That form may also change over time. A parent might rely heavily on rituals or keepsakes in the early months, then find that the connection becomes quieter later. Another parent may feel a stronger need to speak about their baby as the years pass. There is no single pattern that applies to everyone.

A gentle practice

The next time you find yourself wondering whether you should be “moving on”, try asking a different question:

How am I carrying my baby with me today?

The answer does not need to be significant or visible to anyone else. It might be saying their name, looking at a photograph, noticing a memory, making space for a feeling or simply recognising that they are still part of who you are.

Sources & further reading:

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Taylor & Francis.

Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.

Stroebe, M., Schut, H., & Boerner, K. (2017). Cautioning health-care professionals: Bereaved persons are misguided through the stages of grief. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 74(4), 455–473.

Worden, J. W. (2018). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner (5th ed.). Springer Publishing Company.