#WaveOfLight

15th October 2026

It's the Wave of Light tonight - the end of Baby Loss Awareness Week (BLAW), and an evening that means so much to so many people.

The candle that I will be lighting this evening is the same that I've used on previous Wave of Light evenings, a big Yankee Candle that was given to us on our wedding day over 11 years ago. I'm not a very candle-y person, so that's why it's still around all these years later!

The existance of BLAW and this evening's reverence for all those we have lost was a revelation and a relief to me in 2017. I think its impact on me was magnified by the fact that it coincided with what would have been our due date for our first pregnancy.

Each month following our loss in April 2017 brought big milestones that suddenly were turned upside down. The move to a house that should have contained a baby's room; my 30th birthday when I could have a drink; a girls' trip away where I suddenly struggled to connect with a friend of nearly 20 years because she was pregnant and glowing. With each event, I thought I had to push my feelings to one side because this was MY problem, not anyone else's.

Like the pain on the day of my miscarriage, my feelings came in waves. Sometimes I was able to get on with life. Sometimes I was a puddle on the sofa. And the cruelty of these waves was that during my 'getting on with it' times I simply couldn't recognise that other Debbie, and I didn't know how to explain what I was feeling or to advocate for myself to get any help.

So finding out about the Wave of Light, the buildings being illuminated in pink and blue, and the fact that the loss of our pregnancy could be honoured in some way, was a really big thing for me. Where I had felt that there were no real guidelines for how to be a 'grown-up' through this enormous life event, suddenly there was this national recognition and permission to feel, to grieve, and to acknowledge to myself that I had loved that tiny baby and the life that they represented.

I count myself so lucky that lighting my candle tonight will coexist alongside bathtime and bedtime for my girls. To anyone reading this in the trenches of grief around trying to conceive or trying to find your new 'normal' after loss, I send all my love and a heartfelt wish for you to feel some comfort tonight.

This story of baby loss is so common, and yet so often hidden. We honour these lives with our #WaveOfLight today.