7 October 2026

Emma Kafton

Support after loss can’t be one-size-fits-all.

Emma Kafton, co-founder of The Evewell 

There’s no single experience of baby loss, so there can’t be one kind of support. For Baby Loss Awareness Week, our co-founder Emma Kafton explains why that matters to her, and what we’re doing about it. 

This article is about pregnancy and baby loss. If that isn’t something you want to read today, please look after yourself and come back whenever you’re ready, or not at all. 

“Baby Loss Awareness Week has always been an important milestone for us at The Evewell. 

Sadly, loss is a reality for many of our patients and our team. Some of us have experienced that grief personally, but almost all of us are the sisters, brothers, friends or colleagues of someone who has. 

In my own life, I have stood beside two women who mean more to me than I can explain as they lost their babies in traumatic circumstances. 

I saw firsthand the devastation of their grief. Their losses happened at different stages, and their experiences were very different. What they needed from the people around them was different too. 

But they both desperately wanted one thing: to talk to someone who had walked their path. 

Someone who truly understood. 

And that was something that, no matter how much those of us around them loved them, we simply couldn’t give them. 

Earlier this year, I was contacted by leading grief therapist Zoe Clark-Coates MBE to talk about how we might work together to better support people experiencing baby loss. 

Zoe and Andy’s own losses have been immense. But from that unimaginable grief, they have created something extraordinary: Mariposa International. 

Their work has helped change legislation and meaningfully improve clinical care and support practices nationally. And, importantly, they have recognised something that feels incredibly important to me: there is no single experience of loss, and meaningful support cannot be one-size-fits-all. 

Today, Mariposa International encompasses six organisations, each created to support people through a different experience: 

• Saying Goodbye, supporting anyone who has experienced baby loss 

• GrowingYou, supporting pregnancy after baby loss 

• Waiting For You, supporting people choosing to go through the adoption process 

• Holding Hope, supporting people going through fertility treatment 

• Love in Every Tear, supporting those who are supporting someone through loss 

• So Cherished, supporting families whose babies have received a genetic or terminal diagnosis 

Together, they now reach more than 50,000 people every week. 

So when Zoe and Andy asked whether we would stand alongside them, my answer was an unequivocal yes. 

Not just for the people I love who have experienced this loss. 

Not just for the patients we care for every day at The Evewell. 

But for every person trying to find their way through an experience that can feel unbearably lonely and, still too often, silent. 

There is no right way to grieve. There is no universal experience of loss. 

Sometimes what you need most is someone who doesn’t need you to explain. Someone who knows what the days, weeks and months afterwards can feel like because they have lived them too. 

Someone who can say, I understand, and truly mean it. 

That is why I am so proud that The Evewell will be standing alongside Zoe and Andy and supporting their mission. 

Because meaningful support isn’t simply about being there. It’s about understanding what someone needs at that particular point and making sure the right person is there to walk alongside them. 

Because nobody experiencing baby loss should ever have to feel that they are walking that path alone.” 

Emma Kafton 

Finding the right support after loss

Whether your loss happened last month or thirty years ago, Mariposa International’s organisations are there for you. You’ll find all six at mariposa-international.org, and you don’t need to be a patient of The Evewell to use any of them. 

If you’re a patient with us and you’d like to talk to someone, our nursing team and counsellor are here too. Just call us on 020 3974 0950. 

Join us for the Wave of Light 

On Thursday 15 October at 7pm, families all over the world will light a candle for the babies who died too soon. We’ll be lighting ours at both clinics. If you’d like to light one with us, share it on Instagram and tag @theevewell, and we’ll reshare every one.