Maternal Grief-Writing as Transformative Practice

This collaborative essay explores maternal grief-writing as a transformative act of reaching across profound gaps of loss, silence, and understanding. Emily Tammam, a lived-experience communicator and lactation consultant, honours her daughter’s life through blog writing; Sabina Dosani, a psychiatrist, reflects on recurrent miscarriage through memoir. Together, they consider how life-writing sustains memory, reshapes maternal identity, and fosters connection after devastating loss. Central to their reflection is the metaphor of ‘the gap’—between life and death, medical detachment and maternal love, isolation and community. Through a conversational form blending personal dialogue and critical reflection, they navigate the ethical tensions of telling stories born of grief. Writing becomes a bridge between what can be spoken and what remains unspeakable, offering solace, solidarity, and transformation. They argue that life-writing at the edges of life challenges cultural narratives of closure, resisting the erasure of maternal grief. In doing so, this essay contributes new understandings to the fields of life writing, healthcare humanities, and narrative identity, showing how personal storytelling can both heal and provoke deeper social recognition of hidden losses.