For the Woman Who Longs to Be a Mother: The Grief of Not Yet

Weaving Grief
13 hours ago
9 min read

I see you.

I see you carrying the quiet, tender ache of "not yet". I see you wondering when it will be your turn, if your time will ever come, if your prayers will ever be answered, and if your arms will ever hold the life you've long dreamed of and prayed for.

I see the grace with which you continue to show up, celebrating your friends, your sisters, and your loved ones who have what you've so deeply prayed for. I see the way you cheer, gift, support, and love, even when your own heart feels heavy and broken.

I know you have smilied through baby showers, and wrapped gifts with love. I know you have listened to birth stories, and celebrated every milestone, all while holding back tears of your own. You've offered love and prayers for others, while holding your own prayers silently in your heart.

And while the world may not always feel the weight you carry, I want you to know that your grief is real, your longing is sacred, and you are not forgotten.

I wrote an instagram post to the woman who longs to be a mother on Mothers Day this past year, from the grief I was feeling and carrying in my own heart, and it resonated with so many of you. Today, I want to continue that conversation here as we honour Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month this October.

The Grief of Waiting

The journey to motherhood is not always straightforward. For some, it comes easily and/or unexpectedly, and for others, it is a winding path filled with roadblocks, heartbreak, and what feels like an endless season of waiting and wondering.

The waiting, comes in all different forms... infertility, pregnancy loss, adoption delays, timing that feels perpetually "not right", relationships ending, along with endless other factors. All of these expriences, named and not named, carry a grief that is often unseen, unacknowledged, and unnamed.

This ache and pain can be hard to put into words as its one that lingers beneath the surface of our every day lives, surfacing in quiet private moments, and sometimes during unexpected moments.. like when you see a mother holding her child at the grocery store, when yet another pregnancy announcement fills your social media feed, when your cycle comes again, when an appointment is delayed, or when the relationship you believed would lead to a family ends and dissolves.

This is the grief of not yet. The ache of almost.

And the heartbeak of dreams that feel like they are always one season away.

This grief is hard and painful for many reasons, one being because it often goes unseen and unrecognized. There is no funeral, no ritual, no easy ways of saying "I am griving what hasn't yet come". But longing holds its own kind of grief, one that lives in the spaces between what you hope for and what life has (or hasn't) given you so far.

This grief doesn't just live in the body, it lives in our hearts and in our soul. It is the grief of dreams deferred, of "almost" and "not yet", of fearing that maybe it will never happen for you. It is the grief of walking through aisles of baby clothes, with an empty cart and a heavy heart. It is the grief is scrolling past announcements and milestones on social media with a brave face but a breaking heart. It is the grief that whispers, "why not me? when is it my turn?"

Your grief matters, all parts of it, and it is worthy of being honoured.

When The World Doesn’t Know How to Hold This Kind of Grief

Because this grief is "invisible" to most, and often not talked about, the world doesn't know how to meet us in it.

May you hear things like,

"Just relax, it'll happen when it's meant to"
"Why don't you just adopt"
"Do IVF on your own"
"Maybe it's just not the right time"

And while these words may be well intentioned, they can feel like knives and daggers to the heart. They minimize the depth of what you are carrying, and the raw, real, longing that pulses in your bones.

It's okay to protect your heart from conversations that feel painful. To step back from social media when it hurts or feels like too much. It's okay to say no to baby showers or family gatherings when you need to. You are allowed to create space where your grief can breathe. You are allowd to honour your own pace, your own needs, and your own timing.

The Many Faces of This Grief

For those who know, know.

For those that don't know, and those who are open to understanding.. we want to name that there isn't only one story of longing for motherhood, there are countless.

There are women who have spent years in fertility clinics, calendars filled with injections, appointments, and bloodwork. Women who have learned to live between cycles of hope and heartbreak, always measuring time in intervals.

There are women who have held pregnancies that didn't continue, who have known the sweetness of possibility, and the devastation of its loss. The ones who carry both presence and absence inside their bodys, who know that love can grow, even when life cannot.

There are women navigating adoption and surrogacy, holding paperwork in trembling hands, waiting for the day when their name is called, when the waiting can finally end and the belonging begins.

There are women who ache for motherhood but find themelves single, or in relationships that arne't aligned, with partners who aren't ready, or at a crossroads where lifes timing doesn't make sense.

There are women who have chosen not to become mothers but still grieve the idea or version of themsleves who thought they would.

There are women who have lost partners, health, or stability, who are griveing not just the dream of motherhood, but the foundation that that dream requires.

There are women navigating all kinds of pain, unqiue situations and experiences that impact their journey to motherhood, and there are endless ways that this grief is felt and experienced. And yet, at the heart of it all is a yearning, a soul-deep desire to nurture, to create, to bring life into this world in some way. And when that longing goes unmet, it leaves a hollow space that few people understand.

Loving While Longing

One of the most extraordinary things I see in women who carry this longing is their capacity to love, the capacity to hold both love and longing all at the same time. To be stretched deep and wide by both love and loss.

Even in the face of your own heartache, you still celebrate others, you show up, with gifts, meals, presence, love, and care. You clap and cheer, even when your own arms feel painfully empty. This is not small, nor unnoticed. This is evidence of the vastness of your heart, your ability to hold joy and grief, side by side, to love even as you ache.

And in your generous love for others, I want to remind you that you also deserve love, tenderness, and care. You deserve spaces where your grief is not minimized, ignored, or brushed aside. You deserve compassion for the nights you cry yourself to sleep, and rest for the the ache just feels too big to carry alone anymore.

The Sacred Practice of Both/And: Embracing Dualities and Living with Paradox

The Sacredness Of Your Longing

I know that it can be tempting to want to rush past this season, to fill silence with busyness, to protect yourself from hope, to numb the ache of uncertaity. But maybe this waiting, as unbearable as it feels, is also sacred. Not sacred as a way to sugar coat it, bypass the pain, nor beacuse its easy or beautiful, but because it's fertile ground for transformation, the kind of transformation that calls us into our deepest becoming.

Waiting asks us to surrender, to release control, to soften, to trust, to let ourselves be held, to be reshaped by the unknown. Waiting stips away the illusion that life can be perfectly planned and timed. And in the stillness of waiting, the soul asks us to listen, to witness, and to be present.

As painful as it is, in the waiting and longing we meet patience, vulnerability, faith, and the mystery of time that we may never fully understand.

In these in-between spaces and seasons of waiting, we are asked to hold paradox, to nurture hope without forcing it, to grieve without giving up, to find meaning without minimizing our pain.

This is soul work. And while it doesn't takes away the pain, it can root us deeper into ourselves and connect us more fully to our aliveness.

Longing itself is sacred. It is evidence of love, of desire, of our hearts prayers, and of the deep instict to nurture and create life. Whether your path to motherhood is clear, winding, delayed, or totally uncertain, know that your grief and your longing deserve space to be held and heard.

If you find yourself whispering prayers into the dark, tracing your hands over your belly as though preparing a home for something not yet here, or the ways you tend to your body, your home, your heart, building space for a child who may one day come.

This is love in its purest form, love without condition, without guarantee. A love that exists entirely in the unseen.

Grieving What Hasn't Happened

One of the most profound truths about grief is that we don't only grieve what we've lost, we also grieve what never was.

You may be mouring the baby who hasn't come yet, the nursery you haven't yet filled, the family gatherings you haven't yet hosted. You may grieve the birthdays that pass with one empty chair, or the way you imagined your life should have or would have unfolded by now. And this grief is valid, it deserves space, expression, reverence, and care.

Ritual can help us hold grief. Maybe you write a letter to the child you hope to meet someday. Maybe you plant a tree, or light a candle as a smbol of your ongoing hope. Maybe you sit in silence, with your hands placed on your heart and your womb and whisper the dreams you hold and carry. Maybe you let yourself cry a litte more deeply, not just from sorrow, but also from the love that refuses to give up. Maybe you share your story with someone who can hold it without trying to fit it.

There is Life Here, Too

Even as you wait, even within the ache you carry, your life continues to unfold. You are still breathing, your heart still beating, and you are still becoming. You are still growing, creating, loving, and tending. Your expression of motherhood may already be showing itself in ways you haven't recognized or acknowledged.

Maybe it shows in the way you nurture your friendships, your home, your work, your business, your creativity, or the earth around you. I imagine there are ways you are mothering simply by being who you are. And in no way does that erase the longing you feel for your child, it is just a gentle reminder that your capacity to love, to hold, to create, is not defined by biology alone.

The dream of motherhood may still be waiting to come through, in time, in form, in mystery, while the essence of it is already alive within you.

A Blessing for The Woman Who Longs to Be a Mother

May you take this moment for you today, to let yourself feel fully, without shame, or needing to be anything other then what you are right here, right now. Allow the tears, the prayers, the questions to emerge and surface. It all belongs, and you are not forgotten, you are not invisible, and you are not less-than. Your longing is sacred, real, and it matters.

Your capacity to love, is nothing short of extraordinary.

May you be met with tenderness in the places that ache, in the ways your heart hurts. May you be held in gentleness as you sit in this space of not knowing that feels unbearable. May you be surrounded by love that is as generous as the love you so freely give, and may you never forget that you matter, you are worthy, and you are not alone.

Grief and longing often ask us to live in uncertainty. They remind us that life rarely unfolds the way we imagined, and yet, even in the ache, something sacred is forming. Whether motherhood finds you through birth, adoption, mentorship, creativity, or within the tend of your own becoming — you are part of the great cycle of life, love, and care. The waiting, though painful, is not empty. It is shaping you, preparing you, fortifying you, and changing you.

May you remember that you belong to a lineage of women who have waited, prayed, grieved, and hoped — and who have found, somehow, the courage to keep going and loving through it all.

Continued Reading and Resources:

Deferred Dreams: Holding Space for The Grief of an Uncertain Future

Spirit Babies by Walter Makichen

Bearing the Unbearable by Dr Joanne Cacciatore

Pregnancy After Loss by Zoe Clark Coates

About Us:

Weaving Grief specializes in compassionate grief therapy for individuals navigating loss of any kind - death, breakups, relationship transitions, chronic illness, loss of self, and more. By addressing these profound experiences, Weaving Grief empowers clients to grieve freely and live fully. Through somatic practices and meaningful reflection, we’re here to help you navigate these tender moments and rediscover the fullness of life.

Specific areas of focus: death of a loved one (recent or past), life changing transitions, relationship transitions and break ups, pregnancy loss, grief around family planning, chronic illness, loss of Self, and supporting entrepreneurs through the grief that comes with growth.

To learn more about Our Team or to book a session, click here.

In this blog post: This post is for the woman who longs to be a mother. Whether you’re navigating infertility, pregnancy loss, or the waiting that feels endless, your longing is sacred, your grief is real, and you are not alone.