On December 14, 2023, Tallia Deljou experienced great joy and tragic loss. At 2:01 am, her baby boy Araam Deljou Garrett joined her family for one precious day before taking his last breath at 5:22 pm in his father’s arms. Ever since, the Heal Magazine contributor and inner child coach has been openly sharing her path to healing, addressing commonly held misconceptions about grief like “time heals all wounds” and inviting her community to keep her son’s memory alive.
As she writes, “Healing is an active and relational process. By active, I mean it requires conscious effort and attention. By relational, I mean it requires being witnessed and held in the safety of relationship(s).”
Tallia was kind enough to bring us into this intimate journey. She shares her pregnancy experiences, how she and her husband are turning toward each other in this moment, and the peace she has found beneath her pain.
— When did you first realize you wanted kids?
Being in a motherly role has always felt natural to me. Especially now — in the work that I do professionally with inner child healing — I feel like a mother holding space for the wounded inner child in all of us. It’s always felt like a part of who I am. The decision to start trying for a family came in 2021. That was the beginning of our pregnancy journey, and I am now three years out.
— Do you mind sharing a little about that journey?
Our journey has not been one of having trouble conceiving; it’s been one of having trouble keeping a pregnancy to full term, with the hopes of bringing a living child into this world. I’ve had three pregnancies, and every one of those three pregnancies ended very differently. One was a miscarriage at 11 weeks, one was a chemical pregnancy that ended at six weeks, and the most recent was the loss of our living son who was born at five and a half months (referred to as neonatal loss) due to cervical insufficiency. He was earthside for 15 hours before taking his last breath.
— Thank you for sharing. Did you get to meet and exchange energy with him while he was alive?
With a baby that small at 22 and a half weeks, he went straight to the neonatal intensive care unit in critical condition. While I did get a chance to hold him in the 15 hours that he was living, it felt to me like his soul had already left his body which made it hard to feel connected physically. I was also very much in shock, as I had just come out of an emergency C-section, so I was not fully in my body.
Read the rest of the interview in issue 7 of Heal Magazine, now available in our app.
