Scripts for announcing a loss on social media
- Apr 30
- 3 min read
Posting the news that you’ve experienced a loss can be not only emotionally difficult but administratively difficult as well. To try to alleviate that burden, we wrote you some sample scripts you can use to share this heartbreaking information.
You might start with a clear statement of what happened:
You can choose to include details about a cause of death as you want, whether the cause is known or not.
With heavy hearts, we share with you that our pregnancy has ended in miscarriage.
Our time with this little nugget as part of our family on earth has ended. We lost Baby Smith in a miscarriage for unknown reasons last week.
I’m sad to announce that we have experienced the loss of little Rosa at just 11 weeks. Rosa likely had a genetic condition called trisomy 18 that caused her death.
Our son, Dante, died last week at 25 weeks gestation. We do not know why.
Our four month old, Bean, passed away in his sleep earlier this week.
We don’t know how this happened, but Janaa died a few days ago.
Consider whether you want to share with your network what this means to you:
I am crushed.
We are mourning the loss of what was and of what might have been.
We are absolutely devastated.
I am reeling from this loss.
I am numb to the world right now.
Share any invitations you’d like to offer:
Please keep an eye on my page; I’ll be sharing details for Janaa’s funeral soon.
Please join us for Bean’s memorial on X date at Y time at Z location.
If you would, send us prayers and good wishes as we struggle through the coming days.
Join us in lighting a candle for Rosa at 7pm tonight. We’d love to see a picture of your candle if you’d be willing to share in the comments.
Detail how people can help you, if you’d like:
We would appreciate your prayers and respect for our privacy.
We know that people don’t like talking about these topics, but it would mean the world to us if, next time you see us, you ask us about how we are doing anyway.
We are heartbroken that her story has ended this way, but it is a story we still want to share. If you are willing to listen, please reach out and let us know if we can share the story of our dear daughter with you.
You can support us best by joining our meal train at this link.
If you want to help us, please see this list of our current support needs.
Detail how people may be hurtful, if you’d like:
Please don’t ask us details of why this happened.
We would appreciate it if no one tells us how to live the next stage of our lives: no telling us that we can just have another, no telling us to move on. We will be grieving our son in our own way.
Do not tell me this was God’s plan. That’s hurtful and also unhelpful.
I don’t need or want any suggestions about how to prevent another loss. However you might mean it, it comes across as unkind.
I would prefer that you focus on expressing sympathies when you see me rather than giving advice or sharing stories of other people’s similar traumas.
We don’t want people to ask our living kiddos questions instead of asking us. If you want to talk to the older siblings, you can express your sympathies, but if you have any questions, please address them to us, the parents.
Introduce pictures if desired:
Keep in mind that some people and bots may mark any photos of deceased little ones as inappropriate. You might choose to share them knowing that, or to share a link to an external album.
We’re sharing here a family portrait taken by our photographer of our family before we had to say goodbye to Rosa.
I’m sharing a picture of the baby in the comments, in case you want to see how perfect and beautiful she is.
We were able to get pictures of our little one using saline immersion photography. Those pictures are below.
Don't feel like you need a happy or forced conclusion:
It's okay to just end the post without trying to ease the weight this reality places on you.
