How to Help When You Can’t

Supplies Needed:

1. One clean towel you will pretend you’re folding for practical reasons.
2. A glass of water you will refill too often.
3. A phrase you can repeat when your mind empties: I’m here.

Step 1: Remove shoes at the door 👞

If you step too loudly, the house will remember you are alive.

Walk like the hallway is a church aisle and you have forgotten why you came down it. Walk like your feet are allowed the gentle caress your heart has lost.

If you have hardwood, step on the rugs. If you have carpet, step softly anyway. It is not that she needs silence. It is that you cannot bear to be the sound that breaks her.

This is called creating a calm environment.

In your home, it is called not making anything worse.

Step 2: Do not offer solutions. 🧎🏻‍♂️‍➡️

Do not say:

• “At least we know you can get pregnant.”
• “We can try again.”
• “Everything happens for a reason.”
• “God needed another angel.”

Do not say anything that tries to shove her grief into a box with a lid and a label. However, do your best to contain your own until you are alone.

You are not qualified to negotiate her grief. You do not have the credentials to console her pain away.

You do not possess the skill set to repair this. The best response is a difficult but simple one: stay.

If you feel the urge to offer a plan, swallow it.

If your tongue twitches toward hope, bite down.

If hope comes back, it will return on its own. Do not drag it into the room like a drunk friend who can’t shut up.

Step 3: Offer physical comfort, but ask first. 👫🏻

Be present. But don’t hover. Don’t rescue.

Say, “Can I sit with you?”

This is important. Consent matters when everything else has been taken.

If she says no, nod. Don’t look wounded. She lost what she carried. Don’t lose what you have to carry. Don’t lose her.

If she says yes, sit on the edge of the bed, not in the middle of it. Leave space as if grief is an animal that might bolt if cornered.

If she reaches for you, hold her like you are holding something fragile and holy.

If she doesn’t, keep your hands to yourself and let your arms ache. There are a thousand kinds of intimacy. Sometimes it’s the quiet permission of not being touched.

This is called respecting boundaries.

You will call it learning your wife again.

Step 4: Validate.⭐️

Validation is not agreeing with every sentence. Validation is acknowledging that her reality is real.

Say:

• “I’m so sorry.”
• “This shouldn’t have happened.”
• “I’m here.”

Say it like you mean it.

Say it when she cries.

Say it when she doesn’t.

Say it when she stares at the ceiling as if the ceiling might answer.

Do not say, “Be strong.” Do not say, “You’ll be okay.”

Okay is a country neither of you can find on a map right now.

If she says, “My body failed,” do not argue like a lawyer. Do not correct her like a teacher. Do not fix her language.

Say, “I hate that you feel that way. I hate that this happened to you.”

If she says, “I can’t do this,” do not respond with motivational posters.

Say, “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Then prove it by not leaving the room.

Step 5: Learn the difference between her grief and your grief. ☔️

Her grief is a storm inside her body.

Your grief is a weather system nobody can see.

You will want to be the steady one. You will think steadiness is love. You will think your job is to hold the frame of the house so she can collapse without the roof falling in.

That is partly true.

But understand: if you pretend you are untouched, you will become distant. Distance will look like abandonment. You will say you are fine. She will hear you saying she is alone.

Men are often advised to “be supportive.”

Supportive means present.

If you need to cry, do not cry in front of her. Do not cry like a confession that forces her to comfort you.

To prevent accidents, let the grief leak out in honest places:

• in the kitchen with your head against the cabinet,
• in the shower where the water hides the sound,
• in the car with the engine off.

Grief is not a competition. But if it were, you would lose.

Step 6: Handle logistics so she doesn’t have to. 📱

This part will make you feel useful.

Call the doctor back. Ask the questions you didn’t know existed yesterday:

• What happens next?
• What are we watching for?
• When is the follow-up?

Write it down because your brain is a sieve today.

Find the heating pad. Wash the sheets. Bring ibuprofen, if the doctor said it’s okay. Make toast because toast is gentle and the body still requires things, even when the heart refuses.

Cancel plans without asking her to be the one to disappoint people.

If family asks for details, say, “We’re not ready to talk.” Don’t hand them her story like a dish at a potluck.

If someone says, “At least it was early,” inhale slowly and exhale without committing a felony.

Step 7: Do not rush her timeline. ⌚️

Grief has no due date.

The internet loves timelines:

• One in four.
• Most couples go on to have healthy pregnancies.
• Your period may return in four to six weeks.
• Emotions may fluctuate.

These facts are meant to be helpful. They are also a way of trying to put a ruler against a wound.

If she cries two weeks from now, do not say, “I thought you were doing better.”

If she laughs in the grocery store because a toddler waved at her, do not stare at her like laughter is betrayal.

If she wants to talk about it every day, listen every day.

If she doesn’t want to talk about it for a while, do not force conversation like prying open a stuck drawer.

Just keep showing up. And Stay.

The world will move on offensively fast.

Do not be another thing that moves away.

Step 8: Don’t avoid the words. 🗣️

Say: miscarriage.

Say: baby.

Say: loss.

Don’t say, “the situation,” like it’s a business problem.

Don’t say, “what happened,” like it’s a weather event.

If you are religious, resist the urge to wrap it in theology before the bleeding stops.

Faith is not a bandage you slap on someone else’s skin.

If she asks, “Why?” do not answer unless you are God, and if you are God, you’ve been doing a poor job returning calls.

Say, “I don’t know.”

Say, “I wish I did.”

Say, “I’m angry too.”

If you have to say something spiritual, make it small and honest:

“God, stay.”

Step 9: Prepare yourself. 📝

There is a specific kind of loneliness you can cause by trying to protect her.

You will do the dishes loudly because you need somewhere to put your anger.

You will clean the countertops until the laminate shines like a fake smile.

You will scroll forums at 2:13 a.m. searching for a sentence that makes this make sense.

You may learn terms you never wanted in your vocabulary:

• “blighted ovum”
• “chemical pregnancy”
• “D&C”
• “retained tissue”
• “fetal pole”

You will stare at those words like they are written on a headstone.

When she asks, “Are you okay?” do not say, “I’m fine,” but do not unload your grief.

Say, “I’m hurting.”

Say it plainly.

Then return to her.

Love does not mean dumping your grief at her feet.

Step 10: When you finally break, break with integrity. 💔

You will break.

Maybe in the laundry room, holding the tiny onesie you didn’t realize she’d washed already.

Maybe at the gas station when you hear a stranger call her child “sweet pea,” and the words split you like dry wood.

Maybe at work when someone asks, “How’s your wife?” and you say, “Fine,” and the lie tastes like pennies.

When you break, don’t vanish.

Breathe.

Then go back to your wife.