What does maternal mental health actually look like for bereaved mothers? Not the Instagram version.

The real one — with rage, and fear, and loving a child you can barely look at, while grieving another you'll never hold.

Today I'm joined by Jayme Serbell, a writer and memoirist whose journey to parenthood spans 6 pregnancies, multiple losses including 3 early miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy that cost her a fallopian tube, a devastating twin pregnancy where she was faced with an impossible medical decision, a postpartum haemorrhage that nearly took her life, and a postpartum rage diagnosis that finally put language to something she'd been carrying alone.

Jayme speaks with extraordinary honesty about the cumulative weight of loss — how grief compounds, how trauma travels into every pregnancy, every birth, every ordinary moment with a child you fought so hard to hold. And how, even after all of it, the healing happens — slowly, on its own timeline.

• How Jayme's second pregnancy connected the dots on an unrecognised first loss — and the disorientation of grieving both at once
• The way trying to conceive after recurrent loss stripped the intimacy out of one of the most intimate acts of her life
• The impossible decision she and her husband faced in her twin pregnancy, and what it meant to carry both boys — one living, one not — until birth
• The postpartum haemorrhage that left her separated from her newborn in the ICU, and how trauma from that birth shaped everything that followed
• What postpartum rage actually looks and feels like — and why the shame around it runs so deep
• How an ectopic misdiagnosis led to the loss of a fallopian tube and an entirely different kind of grief: anger at the system that failed her
• The way her losses compounded inside her postpartum experience — and why bereaved mothers are at higher risk that rarely gets named
• Trusting your body's knowing, firing doctors who dismiss you, and giving past versions of yourself the grace they deserved

Jayme is currently writing a memoir about her journey to parenthood and writes at Jayme Shares Things on Substack.

• https://www.instagram.com/jaymesharesthings/
• https://jaymesharesthings.substack.com/

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more bereaved mothers find this space.

Connect with Sharna on Instagram: @reproductivelossleadership

Interested in becoming a Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist? Head to the show notes to find the Certification application.

Please note: Nothing shared in this episode constitutes medical advice. If you need further support, please reach out to your healthcare provider. Be gentle with yourself.

That's exactly what today's guest discovered.

Laura Weppler is a fertility support professional, certified fertility doula, and registered nurse with over 12 years inside the fertility system.

She's also a woman who navigated her own deeply traumatic pregnancy loss, multiple failed embryo transfers, and the relentless emotional spiral that no amount of clinical knowledge could protect her from. Now through her practice, Navigating Fertility with Laura, she's building the bridge between the medical and emotional sides of care that she desperately needed herself.

In this conversation, Sharna and Laura explore what it really means to move through fertility treatment and pregnancy loss without adequate support, and why even the most informed women are still falling through the cracks.

In this episode we cover:

• Laura's personal journey through IUIs, a traumatic miscarriage, multiple surgeries, a torn cervix, and failed IVF transfers — and why working inside the fertility clinic didn't protect her from the isolation
• Why ignorance truly is bliss with a first pregnancy — and what changes forever after loss
• The moment a doctor shamed a patient on a recorded call, and what it revealed about how women are being silenced inside the system
• Why the Google rabbit hole never gives you what you're actually looking for — and what does
• How fertility treatment strips couples of intimacy, identity, and joy — and what it takes to come back to yourself
• The case for building a village around yourself — and why one provider is never enough
• What on-demand, text-based support actually looks like in practice, and why it changes everything for women mid-cycle

Connect with Laura:

• Instagram: @navigatingfertilitywithlaura
• Website: www.navigatingyourfertility.com
• Email: laura@navigatingyourfertility.com
• Podcast: Fertility Nurses Unfiltered — launching March 3rd @fertilitynursesunfiltered

Connect with Sharna: International Institute for Reproductive Loss & Trauma Leadership: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

Follow & DM Sharna to Enquire or Apply for the certification

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more women find these conversations when they need them most.

In this episode, I'm joined by Jules Dwyer; hypnotherapist, rapid transformational therapy (RTT) practitioner, and mother of two boys conceived through donor egg IVF, for a conversation about the deeply layered grief that lives inside a fertility journey.

Jules shares what five years, 13 IVF cycles, and three pregnancy losses actually looked like from the inside, including the part we rarely talk about: the profound attachment that forms to embryos in a lab, the grief that accumulates with every failed cycle, and the quiet devastation of losing a pregnancy within a process that tells you to just keep going.

We talk about:

• Why doing mode can become a form of dissociation — and how Jules spent years "project-managing" her fertility instead of actually processing it
• The turning point that shifted her from talk therapy (cycling in her head) to RTT and somatic work (connecting back to her body)
• What the grief inside an IVF cycle really looks like — from follicle scans to the two-week wait to the phone call that ends it
• The layered loss of transitioning to donor egg conception, and the long surrender that finally made space for it
• Why our nervous system can turn against pregnancy when we're not supported through loss
• What surrender actually is — and why it's not one moment, but a series of tiny, uncomfortable micro-movements

Jules also speaks to the experience of parenting after loss, and why two pink lines don't erase the fear that was built across years of trying.

If you've ever felt like the losses inside your fertility journey didn't "count enough" to grieve, or like talk therapy was leaving something important unaddressed, this episode is for you.

Connect with Jules: Instagram: @julesdwyer_

Connect with Sharna: International Institute for Reproductive Loss & Trauma Leadership: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps this work reach the women who need it most.

The April cohort of the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification is open now — and it starts April 6th.

Five spots. Application only.

DM me HERE

This is one of the most important conversations this podcast has had. Because childlessness not by choice is one of the most complex, layered, and misunderstood forms of grief — and it is almost never talked about.

In this episode, Sharna sits down with Judi Johnson, certified grief coach and founder of Embrace Your Future, based in Auckland, New Zealand. Judi specialises in helping people navigate the grief of childlessness not by choice — and she speaks from both professional expertise and lived experience.

Together, they explore what it actually means to reach the point of "I cannot do this anymore" — whether that comes after years of pregnancy loss, failed fertility treatment, or life circumstances that made motherhood impossible — and what happens next, when the world around you still doesn't understand why you're not just trying again.

In this episode:

• Why grief on the reproductive journey starts far earlier than most people realise — long before the decision to stop
• The compounding layers of grief, guilt, hope, and loss that build through fertility treatment and pregnancy loss
• What it means to reach the decision to stop trying — and why that decision is not small, not simple, and not made lightly
• The myth of acceptance: why "you need to accept this" is the wrong thing to say, and what actually helps instead
• The profound loss of identity and sense of self when the future you imagined no longer exists
• How to protect yourself emotionally — in the workplace, at family events, around pregnancy announcements — when the world keeps coming
• Finding safe outlets for anger, grief, and emotional overwhelm
• Why you cannot wait to be rescued, and what it looks like to start doing the work yourself
• The unexpected truth about community — and how belonging eventually becomes possible again

Resources mentioned:

Judi Johnson — Embrace Your Future Website: www.embraceyourfuture.net

Free download: Coping mechanisms for emotional overwhelm

Free download: Breaking free from people pleasing

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/embraceyourfuture_by_judi

Facebook group: Childless Not By Choice community

Connect with Sharna: International Institute for Reproductive Loss & Trauma Leadership: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

If this episode landed for you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps this conversation reach the women who need it most.

"Passion is not a framework. And in a space this vulnerable, the distinction matters."

The April cohort of the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification is open now — and it starts April 6th.

Five spots. Application only.

Built for the woman who already knows this is her work and is ready to do it properly.

If you've been sitting with this, if today's episode landed somewhere deep and you recognise yourself in it, that feeling is information.

Don't talk yourself out of it.

Say yes to yourself today.

DM me on Instagram to apply or find out more. The link is in the show notes.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

One in four. That's the documented statistic. But today's guest, Dr Amanda Garnica — clinical psychologist, researcher, and loss mum herself — believes the real number is far bigger. Because when something is this stigmatised, people don't report it. And when it's not reported, it doesn't exist in the data. And when it doesn't exist in the data, the system has no reason to change.

In this episode, Sharna and Amanda have the kind of conversation that this community has needed for a long time — raw, informed, and deeply human.

Amanda shares what she discovered when she spent years researching pregnancy loss, including something that genuinely surprised her: the sheer number of men who came forward wanting to be heard, wanting words for what they were carrying, wanting someone to finally ask.

This episode covers:

• Why the documented statistics don't reflect the true scale of pregnancy loss — and what that costs families
• What Amanda found when she researched men's experiences of pregnancy loss, and why so many participated when they weren't expected to
• The identity question men grapple with: am I a father if I never held them?
• Why general therapy so often leaves bereaved mothers feeling like something is still missing
• The body-based, somatic piece that talk therapy alone can't reach
• How both Sharna and Amanda have navigated criticism for doing this work — and what kept them going
• The moment Amanda had to press "submit" on her conference presentation and push through the voice that said nobody wants to hear this
• Why your loss is valid — no matter how early, no matter what anyone else has been through

This conversation is for the mother who is still waiting to feel understood. It's for the partner who didn't know where to go. And it's for every practitioner who has ever felt the gap between what their clients need and what the system offers.

You are not alone. The research is starting to say so too.

Connect with Dr Amanda Garnica: Instagram: @avgresearch

Resources mentioned: Short-form Perinatal Grief Scale

Connect with Sharna: International Institute for Reproductive Loss & Trauma Leadership: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps this conversation reach the people who need it most.

Something shifted after your loss.

Not just grief. Not just pain. A quiet, persistent knowing that what you experienced — or what you watched someone else go through — should not have happened the way it did.

That the support wasn't there.

That the medical system moved on before you did. That somewhere underneath all of it was a thought you haven't said out loud yet.

I don't want other women to feel like this.

This episode is for the woman who has that thought.

The one who can see the gap.

The one who keeps circling an idea but doesn't yet know how to turn it into something structured, something speakable, something real.

In this episode, Sharna takes you behind the creation of Loss to Legacy — the intimate four-week immersion she built because she wished it had existed when she was standing in the middle of her own ideas, her own grief, and her own knowing with no architecture to hold it.

In this episode:

Why the gap between what pregnancy loss support offers and what bereaved women actually need became the foundation of everything Sharna has built

The belief keeping gifted women in this space stuck longer than they need to be — and what she offers instead

Why you don't need to be fully healed to begin. You need to be one step ahead

What Loss to Legacy actually is — and what it isn't

What happens across each of the four weeks: story, message, money map, and activation

Who this immersion is for — and how you'll know if that's you

Loss to Legacy — Four Week Immersion Starts March 19th. Five women only.

Week 1 — Your story crystallised into the foundation of everything you build from here Week 2 — Your message, mission, and positioning defined

Week 3 — Your ideas pressure-tested against a financially viable, sustainable structure Week 4 — A clear 12-month map.

Not inspired and uncertain. Activated.

DM the word LEGACY to apply, or use the link below.

Connect with Sharna: Institute of Healing Through Pregnancy Loss: https://www.instagram.com/instituteofhealing_pl/

If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you haven't left a review yet — it helps more women find this work.