We all process grief differently, but at the end of the day, losing someone you love is not something you ever truly get over. If your best friend’s baby died and they wouldn’t stop talking about their loss years later, what would you do?
This woman’s best friend had a baby, but her baby sadly passed away three weeks after her bestie gave birth. Her best friend was absolutely crushed by such a loss, and she’s been doing her best to support her amid her grief.
“It’s been 2 years, but she has never gotten over it. There are days when she would text me blocks and blocks of her thoughts about her loss and her grief,” she explained.
“My heart breaks for her, but as the months went on, I started dreading getting her texts, and while I didn’t tell her to stop talking to me nonstop about her loss, I did start to gently redirect her to talk more with her husband and her therapist because I started to feel exhausted and a level of empathy deficient.”
“I know I sound like an unsupportive [jerk] of a friend, but at some point it’s like I have nothing more to give. She never really stopped though and recently I found out I’m pregnant.”
She has not mentioned her pregnancy to her best friend, because she’s concerned it could trigger her. While this is a special moment in her life, she’s walking on eggshells sharing her joyful news for fear of how her best friend is going to take this.
Making it even worse, her best friend’s anniversary of losing her baby recently came up, and her best friend told her how much she missed her son.
She really did not want to hear about it, but she felt too terrible to share her honesty with her friend. She feels stressed out about her pregnancy, and she hates having to hear about how her friend unexpectedly lost her bundle of joy.
“Yes, this is a confession that I’m a terrible friend, and I kinda wish she would just back off and leave me alone for the duration of my pregnancy, and I resent her for adding to the level of anxiety I already feel and for worrying about how to share this supposedly joyous news with our friends,” she continued.
“I know she lost her baby, and it’s a loss you carry forever, and I shouldn’t make her trauma about me, and it makes me a giant [jerk] for feeling this way…what should I do?”
She has a therapist she talks to, who has told her to take some time apart from her best friend if she feels flooded. She just feels too guilty to take this advice.
Her best friend has a therapist, and she’s tried to get her to rely on that person in a subtle way, but her best friend hasn’t gotten the picture.
She gets that she can’t wrap her brain around how deep her best friend’s grief runs, as she has never lost a child, and to be clear, she’s not trying to force her friend to stick to a timeline of getting over her baby.
“That also contributes to my guilty feeling of having a sense of compassion fatigue because, trust me, if I could, I would love to be there for her completely all day long,” she continued.
“My body is showing the score because I could feel my heart rate picking up sometimes when her texts pop up on my phone, because 50% of the time it was something about her spiraling. She also thanks me all the time for being there for her, which makes me feel extra guilty/trapped/conflicted.”
In the kindest way possible, she should suggest that her bestie join a support group for parents who have lost children, such as Empty Cradle, as they will uniquely understand her grief.
I think grief groups are just different; they offer people who can relate to someone’s position. She’s not really helping her best friend by simply absorbing her pain.
She’s definitely not a bad friend; she just hasn’t walked a mile in her best friend’s shoes. In fact, she’s one of the best examples of a friend I have ever come across, because she’s downplaying her happiness with her pregnancy so as not to hurt her best friend.
That’s also really sad to me. She does need to tell her best friend about her pregnancy. Her best friend might be super excited for her, which tells her everything she needs to know: this is a girl worth keeping in her life. But if her best friend is upset, then she really should let her go, as harsh as it is to say that.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
