Some words become excruciating in the wake of loss. For my guest today, Katie Joy Duke, that word is expecting. After a whirlwind romance and engagement, Katie and her fiancé were over the moon with the discovery that they were expecting their first child together. A beautiful wedding ceremony and a fairy tale pregnancy, as Katie describes it, left them both shocked when after going into labor, they were told that their daughter Poppy, whose beautiful home had been Katie’s womb for the past 9 months, was dead. Katie’s relationship to her daughter, herself, to life, to the very notion of expectations is forever changed. In this episode, and in her beautiful memoir, Still Breathing, Katie brings vulnerability, wisdom, heart, and insight to the much-needed conversation around grieving stillbirth, something that affects 1 in 175 pregnancies in the U.S.

Katie Joy Duke is an attorney turned life coach who published her debut memoir, Still Breathing: My Journey with Love, Loss, and Reinvention in May 2022. Still Breathing is a heart-breaking love story that captures Katie’s experience birthing Poppy, her first daughter, who was stillborn at full-term in 2015. You can learn more about Katie and the work she is doing as a speaker and life coach at www.katiejoyduke.com

Pick up your copy of Still Breathing here along with many of the books featured on this podcast.

(33:00) Katie shares how and why she had developed a forever changed relationship with the words expecting and expectations. This shift comes not only because of the stillbirth of her daughter poppy, but more recently her diagnosis and treatment for stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.

(47:00) Katie shares her hard-worn wisdom about the grief support she had (and wanted) in the wake of the stillbirth of her daughter, Poppy.

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