If this conversation has you thinking more deeply about the way we understand and support reproductive loss, you don’t have to leave those questions here.

The Reproductive Loss Leaders Room is a professional home for practitioners who want to deepen their knowledge, strengthen their practice and be part of the conversations advancing reproductive loss care.

Inside, reproductive loss isn’t one topic amongst many — it’s the core conversation.

Through ongoing education, the Gap Series, live mentorship, multidisciplinary conversations and integration support, you’ll have somewhere to take what you’re learning and explore what it actually means for your work.

Because learning isn’t just about acquiring more information.

Acquisition → Retention → Transfer.

Learn it. Integrate it. Apply it.

And do it alongside practitioners who care deeply about changing what reproductive loss support can look like.

Join the Reproductive Loss Leaders Room:
https://www.sharnasouthan.com/leaders-room-membership 

What if healing after pregnancy loss isn't only about letting go, but also about finding a new kind of connection?

In this episode, I sit down with Anne-Claire, a spirit baby medium, trained midwife, and naturopath who guides women through the emotional, spiritual, and energetic sides of fertility and pregnancy loss. After losing her own baby at 11 weeks, Anne-Claire began offering spirit baby sessions to help women reconnect with their babies, release guilt, and find peace.

We talk about the loneliness of loss, the lack of information and support women are sent home with, and why so many of us feel disconnected from our babies afterwards. Anne-Claire shares her own healing journey, including the moment she realised she had "pushed everything down," and the daily practice that helped her find peace. We also talk about what women often experience in her sessions: less big emotional release, more relief, calm, and a sense of finally being able to breathe.

Whether or not spirit baby work is for you, this conversation is a reminder that you deserve support, and that there's no right timeline for grief.

In this episode, we talk about:

Key takeaways

About Anne-Claire

Anne-Claire is a spirit baby medium, trained midwife, and naturopath. Her work supports women around the world in reconnecting with their bodies, finding peace after loss, and exploring the spiritual side of conception and motherhood.

Connect with Anne-Claire

Resources mentioned

A note on this conversation

This episode reflects Anne-Claire's personal and spiritual perspective and experience. It isn't a substitute for medical or mental health care. If you're struggling after a loss, please reach out to a trusted health professional or support person.

If this episode meant something to you

Share it with someone who might need it, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more women find these conversations.

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you are a practitioner supporting women through reproductive loss and want to go deeper on the neuroscience and body-based frameworks behind this work — the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification is where we take all of this further.

Recurrent pregnancy loss is not simply a series of isolated losses.

A woman may be carrying cumulative grief, fear, trauma, changes in identity, altered trust in her body and healthcare experiences from one pregnancy into the next — yet care can still focus primarily on the loss immediately in front of us.

In my next FREE Gap Series training, we’re going deeper into the Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Care Gap and exploring what practitioners across fertility, birth, mental health, grief and women’s health may need to understand about the whole reproductive experience.

Because better care doesn't require one practitioner to hold everything.

It requires more of us to ask better questions, recognise what may be sitting beneath the surface, understand where our scope fits — and know when another practitioner needs to enter her story.

📅 17 September
🎓 FREE practitioner training
🤍 For existing and aspiring practitioners supporting women through reproductive loss

Join the training here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thereproductivelossleadershipnetwork 

Let’s stop looking at each loss as an isolated event — and start asking what she may be carrying through the whole reproductive journey.

I sit down with Kayla Branstetter — English instructor, TEDx speaker, and doctoral candidate in narrative medicine — to talk about the stories we're not told about infertility, miscarriage, and medical gaslighting.

Kayla shares her deeply personal journey: growing up as the daughter of a teen mom who overcame poverty and an unsupportive medical system, and how that legacy shaped her own path through three years of unexplained infertility, a devastating miscarriage, and pregnancies marked by anxiety rather than joy.

We talk about the coldness of clinical language in moments of profound loss, the grief that comes with infertility and miscarriage that so few people know how to hold space for, and the judgment women face for decisions made in impossible circumstances. Kayla also introduces us to narrative medicine — the practice of centering patients' stories as part of their care — and shares how this work led to her forthcoming book, Don't Be An Athena, which reimagines the myth of Athena and Medusa to explore what happens when women are empowered instead of blamed.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that behind every diagnosis, every lab result, and every "it was just a miscarriage" is a story — and that story matters.

In this episode, we cover:

Connect with Kayla:

In this episode, Sharna recaps a live training from her Gap Series, The Mental Health Care Gap + Postpartum. She unpacks the research on bereaved mothers that rarely gets shown, six gaps in how the current system fails them, and why talk therapy alone was never going to be enough.

In this episode:

Gems from this episode:

Join the conversation: Catch the full training and future Gap Series sessions inside the free community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thereproductivelossleadershipnetwork  

✨ Join the FREE Masterclass: The Mental Health Care Gap for Bereaved Mothers 

If you support women and have ever wondered “What am I missing?” after pregnancy loss, this training is for you. Discover what standard frameworks can overlook and leave knowing what to look for, what questions to ask, and where your role fits in supporting the whole woman after loss.

Join the free masterclass here → https://www.facebook.com/groups/thereproductivelossleadershipnetwork 

In this episode, I sit down with Molly Sellers, a certified nutritional therapy practitioner whose work is shaped by her own experience with two pregnancy losses — including a partial molar pregnancy — stage four endometriosis, burnout, and perimenopause. Molly specializes in root-cause, bio-individual care: hormone balance, mineral support through HTMA testing, blood sugar regulation, and nervous system health.

We talk about what happens when the medical system hands you a "try again in six months" and nothing else — and why so many women are left to do the digging themselves after a loss. Molly shares her own story of miscarriage, an undiagnosed MTHFR gene mutation, a 15-year road to an endometriosis diagnosis, and how she eventually found her way to functional, whole-body healing.

We cover:

A reminder from this conversation: you are not broken, and you don't have to have all the answers today — just permission to get curious about what your body is trying to tell you.

Connect with Molly Sellers:

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps these conversations reach the women who need them.

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you are a practitioner supporting women through reproductive loss and want to go deeper on the neuroscience and body-based frameworks behind this work — the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification is where we take all of this further.

✨ Join the FREE Masterclass: The Mental Health Care Gap for Bereaved Mothers 

If you support women and have ever wondered “What am I missing?” after pregnancy loss, this training is for you. Discover what standard frameworks can overlook and leave knowing what to look for, what questions to ask, and where your role fits in supporting the whole woman after loss.

Join the free masterclass here → https://www.facebook.com/groups/thereproductivelossleadershipnetwork 

There is a moment that Atara Parkinson describes in this episode that will stop you in your tracks.

She has just given birth after 32 hours of labour. Third degree tears. A baby in the NICU. And a security guard who tells her — as her husband attempts to wheel her out of the hospital — that she cannot take the wheelchair. It can't leave hospital grounds. Figure it out.

That moment, she says, became the image that defined her entire career. Because once the baby is out, it is as though the mother disappears.

Atara is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 14 years in the mental health field, a certified integrative practitioner, and a mother of four — three of whom were NICU babies. Her work sits at the intersection of holistic healing, nervous system regulation, minerals and brain health, and postpartum support. She is also one of the most articulate voices I have encountered on what is actually happening inside the body when a woman cannot seem to move through her grief — and why.

This conversation goes somewhere most conversations don't. We talk about the biochemistry of getting stuck. About what happens at a cellular level when trauma enters the body and the nervous system decides it is not yet safe to let the guard down. About why the calcium spikes. Why the magnesium can't get in. Why your body is not failing you — it is protecting you. And what it actually takes to move through that, not just talk about it.

We also talk about the gap between what the medical system offers and what women actually need. About why talk therapy, as valuable as it is, is only ever engaging one part of the brain. And about why the body is sending 80% of the signals in this conversation — not the brain.

If you have ever felt stuck in your grief and wondered why — this episode is for you.

In this episode we cover:

Connect with Atara:

Instagram: @atara.parkinson

NICU & birth trauma focus: @nicufreedom

Website: https://www.ataraparkinson.com/ 

Resources mentioned: The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk (heads up: it's a heavy read, but an important one)

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you are a practitioner supporting women through reproductive loss and want to go deeper on the neuroscience and body-based frameworks behind this work — the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification is where we take all of this further.

 If this episode named something in you, I want you to know there's a next step.

Loss to Legacy is my four-week immersion for practitioners who know they're called to support women through pregnancy loss, but haven't yet found the clarity, the viability, or the roadmap to actually build it. Over four weeks, we work through exactly that — your specific vision, whether it holds up, and a 12-month plan you can actually follow.

Loss to Legacy opens for a new intake on 4th August. Five spots.

If you're ready to stop sitting with the idea, send me the word LEGACY and let's talk about the role you're here to play.

 DM me HERE

In this episode, Jennifer shares her story with unflinching honesty: the impossible decisions made in shock (do you hold your baby? do you take photos?), the guilt that follows women for years after, and the physical reality no one prepares you for — a body that keeps producing milk for babies who aren't coming home.

She spent nearly seven years running from her grief before it caught up with her, eroding her marriage and her health, until she finally chose to face it.

Now a certified coach and founder of Navigating Baby Loss, Jennifer helps bereaved mothers release guilt, rebuild trust in their bodies, and find their way back to hope — including the complicated, fear-laced hope of a future pregnancy.

Sharna Southan hosts this conversation, exploring the parts of stillbirth and baby loss that rarely get airtime.

We talk about:

This is a raw, generous conversation about a topic that doesn't get talked about nearly enough — and a reminder that no one should have to navigate this kind of grief alone.

Jennifer Senn is a certified coach, the founder of Navigating Baby Loss, and mom to twin daughters who were stillborn at 32 weeks. She helps bereaved mothers release guilt, overcome isolation, and move through overwhelming grief — empowering them to find peace and hope for a future that may include the joy of a new baby, with less fear and more confidence.

Connect with Jennifer:

This conversation discusses stillbirth, pregnancy loss, and grief in detail. Please take care while listening. If you're navigating loss yourself, know that support exists beyond what you may have been offered — you don't have to do this alone.

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast

If something in this episode landed for you — if you recognised yourself in it, either as a woman who has lived through pregnancy loss or as a practitioner who has felt the gap in your own work — I want to invite you into Loss to Legacy.

It's my four-week immersion for women ready to move from "maybe there's something I'm meant to do with this" to complete clarity on your story, your purpose, and what you're actually here to build.

Not a business course. Not a certification.

The step that comes before all of it.

📅 Starts 4th August 🤍 FIVE spots only

DM me LEGACY on Instagram: @reproductivelossleadership

Catherine MacLennan has been through six pregnancy losses — three of them in the second trimester, all of them traumatic.

When she went looking for support, she found almost none.

So she built it herself: first the Pinks and Blues, a peer support community, and later the Vilomah Foundation, a UK charity offering free, ongoing support to anyone navigating pregnancy loss or pregnancy after loss.

In this conversation, we talk about what rarely gets named out loud: the trauma that doesn't get validated, the identity that has to be rebuilt from scratch, the partners grieving in silence because they didn't "physically" go through it, and the grandparents mourning a grandchild they never met.

We also get into Catherine's workplace training — what happens when a compassionate manager gets replaced by a tick-box HR process, and why the way an organisation responds to loss determines whether an employee comes back at all.

This is a conversation about grief without a timeline, about validation, and about what it actually looks like to build the support system that should have existed all along.

Catherine MacLennan is the founder of the Vilomah Foundation, a UK-based pregnancy loss support and charity organization dedicated to walking alongside families through one of the most profound losses.

As a specialist coach, Catherine offers personalised support to individuals and couples navigating pregnancy loss and pregnancy after loss, and delivers workplace training on how organizations can support employees through pregnancy loss.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-vilomah-foundation/

Instagram @thevilomahfoundation

TikTok @the.vilomah.found

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/share/1DQWzbthY4/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Website www.thevilomahfoundation.org.uk

Email [email protected]

This episode discusses pregnancy loss, miscarriage, and trauma in detail. Please take care while listening, and know that support is available if this brings anything up for you.

If this episode was valuable to you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more people find these conversations.

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast

The preconception conversation that nobody is having — what pregnancy loss actually does to the body before the next pregnancy, and why standard care is missing the layer that matters most. Join my FREE live training Preconception Readiness After Loss, Wednesday 8th July, 9:30am AEST. Register HERE

Dr. Marc Sklar — natural fertility specialist, Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Harvard Medical School Mind/Body Medical Institute-trained, Fellow of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine, creator of Fertility TV, co-founder of Rejuve Fertility, and founder of Reproductive Wellness Clinics in San Diego.

In this episode:

Sharna sits down with Dr. Marc Sklar for a conversation about what's actually missing from most fertility care — a whole-body, whole-person view. They dig into why so many couples are told their journey is "unexplained," and why that label often just means no one looked past their own specialty.

Topics covered:

A key moment: Dr. Sklar's take on the "birthday deadline" belief many patients carry, and why treating fertility as a light switch instead of a dimmer does real harm.

Connect with Dr. Mark Sklar:

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast

The preconception conversation that nobody is having — what pregnancy loss actually does to the body before the next pregnancy, and why standard care is missing the layer that matters most. Join my FREE live training Preconception Readiness After Loss, Wednesday 8th July, 9:30am AEST. Register HERE

Now for todays episode:

Some women know they want to be a mother. And yet something inside them, something wordless, something physical, makes every step toward that feel impossible. Not because they don't want it. Because their nervous system has decided it isn't safe.

That experience finally has a name.

In this episode, I'm joined by Alexia Leachman, founder of Fearless Birthing, creator of the Head Trash Clearance Method, and the originator of Reproductive Anxiety Disorder (RAD).

After her own pregnancy loss and a journey to understand a fear she couldn't explain, Alexia has spent over a decade helping women and professionals understand what happens when the body fears what the heart wants most.

This conversation goes deep, and it might give you language you've been searching for your whole life.

We cover:

Connect with Alexia

Resources mentioned:

If this episode resonated with you:

If you're a woman who has felt confused, broken, or ashamed by your relationship with pregnancy, fertility, or birth — this episode was made for you. You are not broken. Your body has been trying to protect you. And there is a path through.

If you're a practitioner who works with women in their reproductive years — this is the framework your training didn't give you. Understanding tokophobia and RAD could change everything about how you show up for your clients.

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts if this conversation gave you something — it helps more women find their way here.

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast

In this episode, Sharna sits down with Shalina Lodhia, criminologist counsellor and founder of a trauma-informed practice specialising in intergenerational trauma, domestic and family violence, and abortion grief.

Shalina shares her own deeply personal experience of navigating abortion, twice, under very different life circumstances, and what she's learned about the grief that so often follows in silence.

This is a conversation about the emotions no one tells you it's okay to feel. The paradox of relief and loss. The isolation of having to hide an experience that your body is living through. And the complete absence of support that so many women encounter both during and after.

In this episode, Shalina and Sharna explore:

The emotional reality of having an abortion at 23, in hiding, with no support and no information about what comes after

How the experience shifted in her thirties as awareness, spirituality, and self-knowledge changed how she processed the grief

Why the medical system so often fails women in these moments, treating them as a number rather than a human being in distress

The paradox of conflicting emotions, relief, grief, guilt, peace, and why all of them are valid at the same time

The role of intergenerational trauma and why, for some women, the decision not to continue a pregnancy is an act of conscious cycle-breaking

How Shalina now supports other women through abortion grief, including those in abusive relationships navigating impossible choices

Why post-abortion support is one of the most overlooked gaps in women's healthcare in Australia

A message for anyone listening:

Whatever your reason for having an abortion, it is valid. You are allowed to feel every emotion, including ones that seem to contradict each other. You are not alone in this.

If this episode resonates with you, please share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you're ready to talk to someone who gets it, Shalina's details are linked below.

Connect with Shalina Lodhia: 

If you found this episode valuable, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more women find these conversations when they need them most.

Find me here: @reproductivelossleadership 

If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to stay connected.

My mission is to help change the landscape of pregnancy loss care through education, advocacy, research, and evidence-informed, trauma-informed support. Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone you love, or you're a healthcare professional wanting to improve the care you provide, there's a place for you here.

You can follow my work, explore educational resources, listen to more podcast episodes, or learn about the Pregnancy loss recovery method & Integrated Pregnancy Loss Care framework Or the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification.

Together, we're creating a future where every pregnancy loss is acknowledged, every family is supported, and every practitioner feels confident to provide compassionate, person-centred care.

I'd love to hear what resonated with you from today's episode.

Share your thoughts, leave a review, or connect with me on social media—your voice helps shape this conversation and reach more families who need it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Together, we're changing the future of pregnancy loss care.

Follow the podcast page: @pregnancyloss_podcast