Catherine McNulty

After losing her infant son in 2011, Catherine embarked on a journey to do more than survive grief. The loss forever changed the trajectory of her life and sent her looking for meaning and purpose for the life she was given. She channeled the love for her son into her own healing, self-growth and personal empowerment. Today, she has created a framework to grief that disrupts conventional ways of looking at loss. She challenges her clients to step outside of a victim mindset and regain control of how they navigate grief. She teaches how to grow through grief and encourages speaking openly about grief to break down the walls of silence around grief. Catherine lives in San Diego with her family where she speaks, writes, and offers coaching to those who want to do more than just survive grief. She is a board member of Empty Cradle and volunteers at Miracle Babies and the Ronald McDonald House. Her business, Grief INSPIRED supports those who are grieving and guides them to create a new normal that honors the ones they’ve lost.

Articles:

How to Become a Grief Warrior

To survive the loss of a child takes strength, tenacity, and perseverance. If you’ve lost a child, you know it is the hardest thing you may ever face. Watching my son take his final breath was a debilitating experience that shattered my world and left me wondering if I could physically survive the intensity of so much pain. Every moment without him was a struggle for my own survival. I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know how to live my life without him. I didn’t want to live without him. I was hopeless and in despair […]

The First Thing To Do After Losing Your Baby

Grieving is hard. Grieving the loss of your baby is even harder. Let’s be honest, it just plain sucks. If you are reading this because it’s happened to you, know that this is one of the most challenging experiences anyone can go through. It’s traumatic and requires support. When we wake up to the reality that our baby is gone, we are forced to learn how to grieve and move forward in a completely different life, a life that doesn’t include watching our baby grow up. Let me start by saying, I am so glad that you’ve found the Open […]

Finding EMDR to help with Grief

My favorite quote is from Earl Grollman when he says, “The only cure for grief, is to grieve.” I spent a good two years lost in the throes of loss and grief, not knowing how to overcome my grief after the loss of my son. I felt alone, afraid, and hopeless. I was deep in despair and unsure that anything good be done to get me through it. It wasn’t until I had another son, that things really began to change. The process to get pregnant again and bring him to life was nothing short of harrowing but I somehow […]

Be Selfish to Heal More Quickly

I didn’t believe that my son would die. The death of a child is a tragic and horrific event that happens to someone else, not to me. Until it did. The grieving process sucked the very life out of me. My grief strained me emotionally as I experienced a roller-coaster of emotions like anger, depression, guilt, sadness and confusion. The grief process drained me physically as I realized that the energy I was accustomed to having each day had vanished with my son and was no longer available. I remember telling myself that I should get over being so sad […]

Grief of a Miscarriage is Real

For me, the loss of my child due to miscarriage was just as painful as the loss of my living infant. It’s a fact that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage or loss. Miscarriage often happens early in pregnancy, so we tend to discount that the pregnancy was “real”. I assure you that the pain you feel is very real. There was a biochemical and maternal desire in me to have a child. I knew being a mother was part of my journey. When I found out I was pregnant for the first time, I was overwhelmed. At first, […]

A Grandmother’s Pain of Infant Loss

As part of my connection to Empty Cradle, an organization that supports pregnancy and infant loss in the San Diego area, I spend time facilitating support groups for those who are grieving the loss of their child. When I joined the organization as a facilitator, my goal was to use my five years of experience of grief, loss, and recovery to help support others. I know in my heart that my contribution has significant meaning to those who are suffering but I am also amazed that each time I attend, I walk away feeling as though I’ve been given the […]

‘His Life Was Brief’: Grieving the Death of an Infant

The first time I saw my son, he was lying in a NICU incubator with a small, clear tube protruding from his mouth to help him breathe. The adhesive that kept the ventilator tube in place covered most of his tiny face. His eyes were closed, taped shut to keep out the bright light. He lay there, tiny and helpless, as the doctors explained to me that he needed surgery to close the whole between his heart and his lungs. In healthy newborns, this hole closes at birth. In premature infants like Jackson, it doesn’t. As his tiny body lay […]

The Restlessness of Grief: Taking Back Control

It’s early morning and the sun has just come up. I open my eyes and am hit with a wave of grief as I remember that my loved one is gone. My mind begins to remember the events of the last few days and I replay the reality that now is my life again and again. The pain of the memory quickly moves from my mind down to my chest and into my stomach. Memories come flooding into me of the days before the funeral and the seemingly endless days after the funeral. I roll over trying to shift the […]

A Visualization: How to Choose Healing and Growth

If you find yourself here, it’s likely because you’ve recently experienced the death of someone you love. You may have had time to prepare, or the death may have come suddenly. Either way, the expectations you had for your life and your future were thwarted; taken from you without warning. And as devastating as loss can be, opportunities will arise for you to choose to continue focusing on your sadness or to choose to shift your focus toward healing and self-growth. It is choosing a mindset that is specifically focused on overcoming grief and grieving. That mindset is that grief […]