About this episode

Sharna and guest Shalina discuss the often-silent grief surrounding abortion and the emotional complexities involved.

In this episode, Sharna sits down with Shalina Lodhia, criminologist counsellor and founder of a trauma-informed practice specialising in intergenerational trauma, domestic and family violence, and abortion grief. Shalina shares her own deeply personal experience of navigating abortion, twice, under very different life circumstances, and what she's learned about the grief that so often follows in silence. This is a conversation about the emotions no one tells you it's okay to feel. The paradox of relief and loss. The isolation of having to hide an experience that your body is living through. And the complete absence of support that so many women encounter both during and after. In this episode, Shalina and Sharna explore: The emotional reality of having an abortion at 23, in hiding, with no support and no information about what comes after How the experience shifted in her thirties as awareness, spirituality, and self-knowledge changed how she processed the grief Why the medical system so often fails women in these moments, treating them as a number rather than a human being in distress The paradox of conflicting emotions, relief, grief, guilt, peace, and why all of them are…

More episodes of What I Wish I Knew beyond Pregnancy Loss

• EP140: Six Losses, one foundation: Guest Catherine MacLennan on building the support she never dad · July 19, 2026 · 43 min
• EP139: The silo effect: Why your doctors aren't seeing the whole picture - Guest Dr Marc Sklar · July 5, 2026 · 1h 1m
• EP138: When your body fears what your heart wants: Tokophobia, Reproductive Anxiety Disorder — with Alexia Leachman · June 28, 2026 · 1h 1m

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