Losing a baby is one of the hardest things you will endure, but what happens when you also lose the relationship with the father?

It’s easy to think, “Who else will love and remember our baby but us?” You may feel as though you betrayed the baby somehow, that your love for that little one should have been enough to keep the family together.

It is even harder if these two are very close together, or worse, that the miscarriage seemed to be the final blow and the relationship fell apart at your darkest hour.

Realize this is a time for inner strength and renewal. Start fresh. Think new. Love harder. Vow to be happier. Know that your little baby changed your life–and surely, certainly it will be for the better. Find a partner who doesn’t leave when times are hard, who respects and loves who you really are, and with whom you can weather dark days together and not increasingly separate.

There is nothing harder than this–nothing. It will take everything you’ve got to trudge through each day. Don’t try to sort out your entire future. Don’t dwell on fears that you will be alone the rest of your life or that you will never have a baby. It’s not true, and you can’t know what will happen next. Focus on getting out of bed, what to put on, what to force yourself to swallow for breakfast. That is plenty enough.

Figure out who your real friends are, if you find yourself without any, join a grief and loss group to help you through. These days will be dark, so dark, and you will have to dig deeply into your inner reserves to find the strength to get through, but it is there. And as you draw from it, each day will get slightly brighter than the last, something random will make you smile when you never thought you would again, and these losses will be a part of what makes you a stronger preson with more awareness of life’s fragility and beauty.

We are not defined by what we have lost, or how, or why, but by how we survive it.