Moving Forward in Grief vs. Moving On from Grief

For a mother who has lost a baby, one of the hardest things to hear is the well-meaning phrase: ‘You have to move on.’ The idea of moving on can feel like a betrayal—as if healing from your baby’s death requires forgetting, as if the love you have for your baby has an expiration date. But grief and love don’t work that way. The truth is, we don’t move on from our babies. We move forward with them.

Moving on implies leaving something behind. When people talk about moving on, it can sound like a call to let go, to put the past behind us, to return to life as it was before. But life can never be the same after loss. A part of our heart is forever shaped by the baby we carried, loved, and lost.

Grief isn’t something we “get over.” It’s something we learn to carry. And yet, carrying grief doesn’t mean we are stuck. Moving forward honors both love and loss. It means allowing grief to be part of our story without letting it be the only story. It means we carry our babies with us—not in our arms, but in our hearts, in our love, and in the ways their lives continue to shape us.

Moving forward means:
Learning to live again, even when we miss them.
Finding moments of joy, without guilt.
Letting love expand, rather than feeling like we must choose between holding on and healing.
Trusting that grief and hope can coexist.

God never asks us to forget. Instead, He invites us to remember—to hold close the love we still have, to carry our babies’ legacies onward, and to trust that He is making all things new.

In deep grief, we need a hope that moves us forward. One of the most beautiful reminders of God’s presence in our grief comes from Isaiah 43:2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”

God does not ask us to face grief alone. He walks with us through every overwhelming wave, every deep ache, every moment we feel like we are drowning. Moving forward does not mean leaving our babies behind—it means walking hand in hand with the One who holds both us and them in His love.

So no, sweet mama, you don’t have to move on. But you can, in time, move forward with love, with hope, and with the knowledge that your baby’s life will always matter.

Jennie is the Executive Director for Hope Mommies. She and her husband Brian live in Washington State and have four children together— Trenton, Paige who has been in Heaven with Jesus since 2010, Mason, and Cora. If you were to knock on her front door today, you’d find her in something comfortable drinking a hot cup of tea, while trying to figure out how to balance all the things that make up a life. She enjoys spending time in God’s word, fresh flowers, board games with her kids, cooking, and evening walks in her neighborhood. She adores being a new creation in Christ and prays she reflects Him well on this earth.