Black Mothers in the Deep South Grieve Lost Babies Alone

In Mississippi, grieving mothers often turn to Facebook instead of therapists. Their posts echo through timelines where care is scarce, Medicaid access is limited and community organizations are left to fill the gap.

When a mother loses her child, the healthcare system should work to ensure she does not lose herself too. image credit: Pexels.com/ RDNE Stock Project

“We’re not crazy. We’re hurting.”   - participant, Jackson Black maternal health focus group (2024)  

In Black communities, grief often moves through faith, family and food — not therapy.  Churches host balloon releases instead of group support sessions. Friends say, “be strong” instead of “get help.” This is the space between resilience and neglect. Without culturally grounded, affordable care, “strength” becomes a mask. For mothers who experienced the loss of their infants, another truth emerged. 

“The county mental health center might give her an appointment in six weeks. By then, she’s back at work or spiraling. We lose mamas between those weeks.” 

Reviewing, the Mississippi Black Maternal and Prenatal Health Focus Groups, I learned many mothers never receive postpartum mental health referrals. Some only discover counseling options after a crisis. So I began looking for them.  

Posting pain year after year  

• “Losing a child is a pain I’ll never get over. R.I.Heaven [ ] my baby girl 💔💜” 

•  “Wish Heaven had a phone just so I can hear your voice... I’ll forever and always love you.” 

•  “Happy Heavenly Birthday [ ] 😇 You would’ve been 12 today. I’m bringing your favorite toy and balloons.”   — posts from a Mississippi mother, 2012-2024 (Facebook) 

Her messages appear year after year — small memorials stitched into a feed otherwise filled with family photos, recipes and scripture memes.  

Another mother posted after burying her four-month-old daughter: 

• “Never in my years did I think I’d feel this type of hurt riding behind this vehicle burying one of my own.”   

•  “All I had to go thru with u at birth, the doctor told me it could be me or you or both of us & God still blessed us thru it … and all I got was four months with u, princess.”   

  
  

  — Facebook post, Mississippi Delta mother (2023) 

I keep these mothers and their babies anonymous out of respect, but their words mirror what the focus groups found: Black mothers are carrying grief largely alone, often with Facebook as the only outlet. 

Support covered on paper, but nowhere else 

Mississippi’s infant mortality rate reached 9.7 per 1,000 live births in 2024 — the highest in the nation, according to the state health department. For Black families, the numbers double. 

On paper, Mississippi Medicaid covers a spectrum of behavioral health services: acute psychiatric care, outpatient therapy, psychiatric nurse practitioners and community mental health centers. In practice, those services are capped, distant, or booked for months. 

• Adult psychiatric visits are limited to 16 per fiscal year

• Many rural counties have no practicing Black therapists or trauma-trained clinicians   

• Prior authorization requirements and transportation barriers further delay care.    

When I asked a public-health advocate in Leflore County what happens after a loss, she sighed: “The county mental health center might give her an appointment in six weeks. By then, she’s back at work or spiraling. We lose mamas between those weeks.” 

Organizations outside of the healthcare system try to fill the gap  

Standing in the chasm between Medicaid coverage and lived access, community organization offer what support they can. 

• Healthy Start Mississippi partners with doulas and peer mentors to provide grief support by phone.   

• Postpartum Support International (PSI) now trains bereavement volunteers in the Delta region, offering culturally competent phone sessions.   

• The Delta Diaper Bank and Community Collective, led by Chelesa Presley in Clarksdale, recently added a “grief pantry” with care packages of journals, candles and therapy referrals for mothers after infant loss.   

Neighboring states offer blueprints for addressing post-partum grief   

In Louisiana, Healthy Start New Orleans embeds licensed therapists inside WIC offices. In Arkansas, UAMS’s ANGELS program runs a telehealth hub that connects postpartum women in rural counties to perinatal psychiatrists within 24 hours.  Mississippi has yet to fund anything comparable statewide. 

A call to multiply care 

If the state can’t expand access quickly, we can multiply what exists: 

1. Fund community-based doulas trained in bereavement and mental-health first aid.   

2. Pay local Black therapists through telehealth grants to reach mothers in care deserts.   

3. Support peer-led grief groups hosted at libraries, salons, and churches.   

4. Normalize postpartum check-ins that ask not just about bleeding but about sleep, guilt and tears.   
   

These aren’t charity projects, they’re survival infrastructure. When a mother loses her child, she shouldn’t have to lose herself too.  Listening to her grief, even from afar, is the first act of care. Building a network that answers her cry — that’s the work ahead.