The Weight I Carry: What It Means to Review the Lives We’ve Lost

⚠️ Content Warning: Child Loss, Abuse, and Secondary Trauma

This blog includes references to child fatalities, abuse, and vicarious trauma experienced in my professional role. If you are sensitive to these topics, please take care while reading. I share this not to trigger, but to bring awareness to the invisible emotional labor many of us carry in our work and healing journeys. Please pause or step away if it feels like too much.

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My Role as a Fatality Review Coordinator

In my role as a Fatality Review Coordinator, I sit with stories that most people will never hear, and many could not bear to. My job is to review every death in our county from 20 weeks gestation through 19 years of age. Every stillbirth, every infant loss, every adolescent gone too soon. I do this work not only to honor the lives that were lost, but to advocate for change, for reproductive health, maternal autonomy, children’s wellbeing, family stability, and along the way-creating structural shifts that could prevent the next fatality.

Believe me when I say: even in a blue state, women’s health is still undervalued. Still overlooked. Still underrepresented.

This work holds the potential to shift policies, influence systems, and uphold the dignity of the people, especially the women, who are so often dismissed. But it comes with a cost.

In my most recent blog, Finding My Footing in the Midst of Chaos, I shared how ungrounded I’d been feeling, how my nervous system had begun to unravel in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. What I didn’t share, was that I had just been asked to review one of the most horrific child abuse cases our county, if not our entire region, has ever seen.

There is no delicate way to say it: this child endured what can only be described as torture. Devastating, senseless, and criminal. I have not yet been able to read through the full set of records without breaking down. One day, I left work altogether to gather myself, to cry, to breathe, to try and remind myself that this work matters.

I am grateful for those tears. They are not a sign of weakness, they are a reminder of how far I’ve come in my own healing journey. Healing from intense burnout that stemmed from all my years working in the hospital. There was a time when I was so numb, I couldn’t feel anything at all. I share this not to evoke sympathy, but to bring awareness. There are many of us doing this work, quietly, often invisibly, holding space for the stories others cannot bear. And while this work is my calling, it is not easy. Not at all.

What are the tools that I utilize?

I write, because there’s something powerful about putting words into the world, knowing someone out there might be listening. Bearing witness matters. It softens the edges. I return to the practices that help me. I move my body through Yoga, I walk, I rest when I need to. I teach Yoga. I offer Ayurveda at my clinic. I share ancient healing tools with my clients and in doing so, I receive the quiet but essential reminder: I’m helping. I’m healing, because when you work in Public Health, change is not quick.

That’s always been the goal: to help, to heal, and to support others in reclaiming their ability to do the same. Ayurveda reminds us that healing already lives within us. My role is simply to guide you back to it.

But what happens when the healer needs healing?

A client recently said to me after a session, “I hope there is someone who can offer Ayurvedic healing to you.” She’s a healer herself. And it hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Because the truth is, I don’t always make time to receive. To soften. To let others hold space for me.

There are very few people in my life who have the emotional capacity to sit with me while I unpack the vicarious traumas of my work, and I respect that. My job is not for the faint of heart, nor should it be shared casually. I even emailed my therapist ahead of time to ask if she was open to hearing what I needed to process regarding my work. I wanted to honor her limits too. Because this work, it can break you open if you’re not careful.

And right now, I am feeling the heaviness.

For instance, it’s 4am and I am awake writing this, instead of asleep. My body is stiff. The stories are living in my joints, in my digestion, in my dreams. I cannot unsee the pictures, unread the words. My sleep, which I’ve worked so hard to rebuild over the past year, is disrupted again. And I know this is the sign that I need to pause. I need to listen.

In Ayurveda, the concept of Prajnaparadha; a failure of the intellect, is considered one of the main causes of disease. When we know what supports our health and choose to ignore it, we open the door to imbalance. When we override our intuition, our body’s quiet warnings, our need for rest, we suffer.

So, I’m listening. I’m asking for help. I’m cultivating new friendships. I’m letting the advice of clients land in my heart. I’m doubling down on the rituals that hold me, the practices that remind me who I am beneath the pain.

To those of you doing similar work, holding the weight of other people’s traumas while trying to stay upright in your own: I see you. I know what it takes. I know how hard it is to keep showing up. I hope you’re finding ways to take care of yourself too.

For those of you who attend my Yoga classes, let me share this: when I’m standing at the front of the room offering a theme, a reflection, or an intention, it’s not because I’ve figured it all out. It’s not because I’m an expert at fixing.

What I have become, is an expert at healing and at expert at sharing.

Over the years, I’ve learned that if I’m going through something, if I’m consumed by something, I’m probably not the only one. So I choose to use the privilege of being a Yoga teacher, of holding space each week, to not just guide you through movement and breath, but to also share my life, my truth, and my journey towards healing.

In a time when loneliness has become its own epidemic, my intention is to create community. To help ensure that no one feels alone in their struggle. To build connection, not just in the room, but in the hearts of those who show up.

In the words of Ram Dass,“We’re all just walking each other home.”

As always, thanks for reading. Please know, I am always hear if you need to share and unpack.

With love,