“Maybe This will be My Year: Navigating a New Year with Pregnancy Loss and Fertility Struggles.”
Every January, the phrase returns: This will be my year.
For many, it sounds hopeful. For those carrying infertility, pregnancy loss, or birth trauma, it often lands differently, as pressure instead of possibility.
Trauma changes how the body relates to time and the future. After reproductive or perinatal trauma, the nervous system isn’t oriented toward “what’s next,” it’s oriented toward what’s safe. So when someone says, “this will be my year,” a traumatized body may hear: Don’t fail again. Don’t hope too hard. Fix what happened. Hurry up. Can you feel the weight of all of that just reading it, never mind if we were actually carrying it.
Instead of excitement, the body often responds with vigilance, tightening, and quiet grief. It can feel the expectations and pressures placed on it and goes on guard to protect you.
One impact of trauma is a foreshortened sense of the future; what this means is that imagining ahead can feel emotionally risky after plans and expectations have already been shattered. This isn’t pessimism; it’s protection. Trauma doesn’t erase hope; it changes its posture. It teaches hope to move more carefully. And as we know, hope after pregnancy loss and fertility struggles can feel almost impossible or slightly out of reach.
The problem with declaring a year is that bodies don’t heal on timelines. Pregnancies don’t obey affirmations. And trauma doesn’t reset on January 1st. If only it were that easy. When the year is framed as something you must conquer, people often internalize failure when life stays complicated.
You don’t need a better year. You need a safer one. And I get why we feel the need to rush into the joyful moments, to finally get there, and after years of working in the field, and personal experience, I know that safety is the foundation that gets us there. We need time and permission to grieve, to sit with the pain that comes with every time we hoped and our hearts did not get what they ache for.
Healing after reproductive and perinatal trauma is less about transformation and more about stabilization. That looks like building regulation, agency, and capacity before expectation. Instead of asking, " Will this be my year, a trauma-informed question sounds more like, “What would help my body feel safer this year?”
Sometimes that looks like quieter intentions:
Rest without apology.
Say no to triggering spaces.
Let grief coexist with forward movement.
Take small, honest steps instead of perfect ones.
Sometimes adjusting our language really does help, so if “This will be my year” feels too sharp, try something gentler:
This will be a year of listening to my body.
This will be a year of building safety, not pressure.
This will be a year where healing doesn’t have to perform.
And if you’re not ready to name the year at all, that’s okay too. You don’t have to be hopeful to be moving forward. Sometimes the bravest orientation after trauma is simply, I’m still here, and I’m allowed to move slowly.
Not a perfect year.
Not a productive year.
But a more self-compassionate one.
Written by: Dr. Teela Tomassetti (PSYD)- Teela offers support across Canada and specializes in birth trauma, pregnancy loss and fertility struggles