I Never Held You: Finding Healing and Hope After Miscarriage
By Ellen M. DuBois • Foreword by Dr. Linda Backman
More than thirty years ago, Ellen M. DuBois experienced the loss of her first child through miscarriage. The words spoken in a sterile exam room — “the fetus is no longer viable” — are still etched in her memory.
Nearly a decade later, after living through layered grief and spiritual searching, she wrote I Never Held You to offer what had been missing when she needed it most: a compassionate, faith-centered resource for women navigating miscarriage and pregnancy loss.
Today, decades later, the message remains the same — your grief is real, your baby mattered, and you are not alone.
With honesty, tenderness, and spiritual depth, Ellen shares her journey through shock, anxiety, anger, and quiet healing. She writes about choosing between two painful medical paths, returning to work while carrying invisible grief, and learning how faith sustained her when nothing else could.
Featuring a heartfelt foreword by licensed grief counselor Dr. Linda Backman — herself a bereaved mother — this book also includes four moving stories from women of different faith backgrounds who share their own miscarriage experiences.
Inside you’ll find:
• A deeply personal account of miscarriage, grief, and spiritual growth
• Gentle encouragement for emotional recovery at your own pace
• Reflections on faith, resilience, and honoring the baby you never held
• Real stories from women who understand this unique and often unspoken loss
Whether your loss was recent or years ago, whether your faith feels steady or shaken, this book offers comfort, validation, and hope.
Miscarriage is not a small loss.
You did not lose “just a pregnancy.”
You lost a child, a dream, and a future imagined.
While you may never have held your baby in your arms, you will always hold them in your heart — and you do not have to walk this journey alone.
Ellen DuBois wrote I Never Held You, a book about miscarriage, grief, healing and recovery because she didn't want women to feel as alone as she did after her miscarriage over twenty-years ago. It was a "pre-Internet" world, and trying to find something to help with her grief seemed impossible. Her fiction book, Jackie's Heart, is also available on Amazon in ebook format. It's romance packed with suspense. It's a story of love, loss, grief, overcoming the odds and a taking a chance on love again. It's been called a real "page turner," filled with twists and unexpected turns. Ms. DuBois has also been published by: Blue Mountain Arts with her poem "I Whispered a Prayer or Two" as an inspirational greeting card and included in their gift book, "Sisters"; is a contributing author in More God Allows U-Turns (Barbour Publishing/Promise Press); Conquering Panic and Anxiety Disorders, Success Stories, Strategies and other Good News (Hunterhouse Publishing) and Soul Matters for Teens (Thomas Nelson Inc.). Ellen DuBois resides in Massachusetts with her fiance and rescue dog, Cooper. She's working on her next book, teaching piano, enjoys photography, making jewelry and "learning something new every day on this journey called life." She welcomes you to visit her miscarriage support site at miscarriagehelp.com and her personal/author site at ellendubois.com.
