Listening Lounge
- Abi Yardimci
- 22 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 16 minutes ago
Trigger Warning: This written and visual piece explores baby loss and neonatal death. Please look after yourself and only continue if it feels right for you.
Through the lens of Equity, Diversity, Equality & Inclusion, a think piece on 'Living With Loss' - creating a safer space for exploring perinatal grief.
On Mon 17th November 2025, we were delighted to host our online, 'Listening Lounge'. This free, podcast-style workshop is part of our 'Trusted Spaces' workstream, where we bring together members of the grassroots perinatal mental health community to explore how to genuinely nurture and embrace EDEI within our services.
The Listening Lounge is a Hearts & Minds Partnership project brought to you by our brilliant 'Root Makers' - a collaborative and diverse team of people from our sector working alongside Hearts & Minds to help work towards a more inclusive and equitable sector. You can find out more about the Root Makers here.
For this Listening Lounge, we focused on the topic of, 'Living with Loss' - creating a safer space for exploring perinatal grief.
We explored our theme through a springboard talk, deep-level listening, a recorded poetry performance, an optional wellbeing exercise and a generous panel discussion derived from lived experience with plenty of room for change-making conversation. Our speaker was Jessica Weeks, (Founder of Hannah's House and Service User Voice Rep for Midlands NHSE) and joining us on the panel were Alex Paterson (Hearts & Minds Root Maker and Infant Mental Health and LGBTQ+ Families Advocate) and Sharon Coaker (Hearts & Minds Evaluation Partner and Baby Loss Specialist).
Jessica, Alex and Sharon all generously and sensitively shared their own lived personal and professional experience of perinatal loss and grief. Many of us in the space had experience too, so the conversation was particularly poignant, sensitively approached and held as safely as possible.
Attendees were given the opportunity to raise challenging and exploratory areas for discussion. As always, the chat was reflective of not only the immense expertise within the sector, but also the unwavering commitment to working with and for ALL families experiencing loss. There was a deep recognition that perinatal grief comes in many shapes and forms and particularly that people who are marginalised may experience loss and grief very differently. It's important we, as a sector, keep talking about how we can make our services truly person-centred and culturally sensitive.
As a means of continuing this theme, Jessica has written a think piece on 'Living with Loss' and we are delighted to share it here, on the Hearts & Minds blog.
Trigger Warning: This written and visual piece explores baby loss and neonatal death. Please look after yourself and only continue if it feels right for you.
LIVING WITH LOSS
I’m a wife and have given birth to four beautiful children, three who live with us here and one in heaven.
Our journey to parenthood began in 2013, a year after we were married, we found out I was pregnant shortly after our honeymoon to the USA but sadly that pregnancy ended in an early miscarriage.
In 2014 I was pregnant again and our first daughter was born bringing joy to our whole family. After some long-distance travel and enjoying being a family of three, we decided to grow our family again and by mid-2016 I was again pregnant. However, this pregnancy was to be very different and would change our lives forever.
During our 12-week scan some anomalies were found and we were referred to fetal medicine; where a diagnosis of anencephaly and spina bifida were given. Despite her “incompatibility with life”, our Emelia was fighter and she did indeed live. Her 57 minutes on this earth changed our world.
Very early into our healing journey we knew we were going to survive, we were so surrounded by love. Out of our pain Hannah’s House was born after the death of Emelia in 2017, when our eldest daughter was only two.
We named our charity Hannah’s House, after our eldest daughter, to create a place where siblings as well as parents could be supported through their baby loss.
Since Emelia died, we have had two beautiful boys and two more miscarriages. We have first-hand experience that pregnancy after loss can be fraught and parenting after loss is both equal parts hard and joyful, which is why Hannah's House provides specific support in these areas too.
Having experienced the pain of neonatal death and multiple miscarriages we want to provide support and comfort to others going through the same. At Hannah’s House we come alongside your whole family for every step of the journey through to healing after baby loss.
You can read more about our story here.
I’m very aware that not all pregnancies include a baby coming home, and I’ve drawn on this experience to bring hope to bereaved families. I also work with NHSE Midlands as the Perinatal Service User Voice Rep to listen to families with empathy to impact policy that closes the inequality gap within perinatal services in the Midlands.
The key element of my role is to support the MNVP's and ensure that they have what they need to hear the voices of women and their families in the region.
How to Provide Compassionate Support
There are some key practical application for organisations looking to support bereaved families:
Professional curiosity with sensitivity! The only way to get true personalised, equitable, diverse bereavement care is if we ask families how they want to be listened to. It's about gentle encouragement to find a safer community to share stories
Never start any sentence with “at least . . . ever
If their baby has a name, please use it
It’s ok not to know everything, please do signpost to organisations like Hannah’s House, Sands, and other organisations listed below . . .
Our little miracle lived for just 57 minutes, but changed everything. She gave me a new perspective on life and was the inspiration for our charity. Her legacy is helping others and that way she lives on.
Emelia, I love you. Thank you for being my daughter.
If you'd like to find out more about Hannah's House, Please visit their website and / or Instagram page.
Signposting
For helpful signposting (personally or professionally) around perinatal loss and grief, you can make use of the signposting provided by the Hearts & Minds Partnership in the following ways:
Our interactive map of England-wide perinatal mental health services can be searched using the filter, 'Loss & Bereavement'
The Resources page of our website includes some organisations working in this area
The Living Library in our training platform, 'Smart Space', includes some sector-relevant resources and signposting on loss and grief (this is FREE to access and can become an integral, ongoing support for you and your organisation)
Jessica also suggests the following signposting links:
Black Baby Loss Awareness Week - a grassroots campaign centring Black families in the fight to prevent baby loss and improve pregnancy & babyloss care. Founded by Alicia Burnett
TFMR Mamas - supportive info and resources for people who have faced Termination For Medical reasons (TFMR)
The Worst Girl Gang Ever – bringing people together to share, heal, and support each other through miscarriage, baby loss, and infertility
Child Bereavement UK - useful guidance for working with and supporting bereaved families
Hannah's House Sibling Support - support for siblings experiencing loss
Birth, Breath & Death - best care practices for the wider family who have had a baby die or experienced pregnancy loss
Ibraheem's Gift Pack - designed with a hospital Imam and contains the immediate necessities that parents would need to help them prepare for their baby's Muslim burial
Special thanks to our Root Makers team who worked on the Listening Lounge: Lauren Parr from Make Birth Better and Aileen White from My Birth Support CIC.
If you'd like to find out about the next Listening Lounge, as well as all the other Trusted Spaces that Hearts & Minds provides for the VCSE in perinatal mental health, please visit this page of our website. You can also sign up to our newsletter to make sure you don't miss a beat.