The Day My Children Were Born—and Died—and How I Still Move Through December

By: Dr. Sarah Berg, Founder of Selfority

Every year, the world begins its familiar December transformation.
Lights go up. Playlists turn over. Words like merry, bright, joyful, and festive fill every corner of our lives—as if this season can only be one thing, and that thing is happiness.

But for so many of us, the holidays are not a single note.
They are a harmony of contradictions.
A quiet ache wrapped inside a glittering season.

And for me—for twelve years now—December holds the weight of the greatest love and the deepest grief I have ever known.

On December 11th, my twins were born.
And on December 11th, both of my twins died.

It is the day I became a mother.
It is the day I said goodbye.
It is the day that split my life into before and after.

The Season That Changes Me Every Year

As the anniversary approaches, the air in my chest tightens. The world around me speeds up while I internally slow down. I can feel myself time-traveling before I even realize it’s happening—pulled back into the sterile hospital room where everything I understood about my future unraveled.

The transition into December is always the same:
A quiet emotional acceleration.
A deepening tenderness.
An undercurrent that only I can hear.

And yet on the outside?
Life marches on with cheerful obligation.

Holiday concerts. Cookie exchanges. Classroom parties. Year-end deadlines. Gift lists.
The calendar fills, and I fill with a heaviness I’ve learned to hold without spilling.

People assume grief is loud.
Mine arrives as a whisper.

The Ornaments

Every year, when I pull out the Christmas tree decorations, I pause at the same moment: the moment my fingers reach their ornaments.

Small, beautiful reminders of children who never came home.

I hang them carefully, deliberately.
I place them where I will see them often.
And every year, without fail, I cry—quietly, privately—because the act feels like both a ritual and a rupture.

There is something so achingly symbolic about hanging ornaments for the children who are missing. It is a gesture of love, a tether to the few physical pieces of them I still hold.

But it is also a reminder of the life we imagined.
The stockings we never embroidered.
The holiday cards that never included their faces.
The chaos and mess and laughter that never echoed in our home.

Grief grows quieter with time, but December presses on that old bruise every year.

What Loss Looks Like in a Season of Joy

The world doesn’t make much space for grief in December.
And yet grief doesn’t negotiate.
It doesn’t reschedule itself out of respect for the holidays.

Loss during this season is unique because the contrast is so stark:

• Joy everywhere

• Pain within

• Celebration all around

• A single empty space at home, or at the table, or in your heart

We often talk about holiday grief as something to “get through,” but what I’ve learned is this:

It’s not something you get through.
It’s something you learn to carry.

It doesn’t diminish the joy you feel.
It doesn’t negate the gratitude you hold.
It doesn’t make you ungrateful or negative or “behind.”

Grief is simply the love that no longer has a place to land.

The Anniversary That Is Also a Birthday

On December 11th, I honor two children I never got to raise.
I speak their names.
I look at their pictures—the ones without me in them, because I could not bear to be captured in the moment I believed I had failed them.

And I feel everything at once:

• gratitude for their existence

• sorrow for their absence

• the ache of memory

• the miracle of having known them at all

Anniversaries like this don’t fade.
They soften, but they remain sharp around the edges.
The body remembers even before the mind does.

Some years the grief arrives as a quiet companion.
Other years it crashes through the door without knocking.

Both are allowed.
Both are normal.
Both are love.

If You Are Grieving This Holiday Season

You are not failing the season.
You are not doing December wrong.
You are not supposed to feel only one thing.

Your heart is allowed to hold joy and sorrow at the exact same time.
You are allowed to celebrate, or withdraw, or simplify.
You are allowed to skip the party or leave early or cry in the car.
You are allowed to honor who you’ve lost in whatever way feels right for you.

And if the world feels impossibly bright while you feel dim:
Please know that you are not alone.

There are others—quietly, invisibly—hanging ornaments that remind them of someone missing.
Lighting candles for someone who isn’t coming home.
Smiling outwardly while something inside them whispers the truth:
This season is hard, because this season is layered with love.

Twelve Years Later

I no longer expect December to feel simple.
It is the month that contains the pieces of my heart.

It has taught me that grief is not the opposite of joy—
it is the shape love takes when life doesn’t unfold the way we imagined.

This year, on December 11th, I will pause.
I will breathe.
I will honor Brooke and Hunter, the two children who changed me more than any season ever could.

And I will hang their ornaments with tears that no longer frighten me.

Because my grief is also my love.
And my love is forever theirs.