Conceptualizing and articulating pregnancy loss through embodiment in peer interaction

•Representational gestures can trigger recipient participation and co-narration.•Embodiment and co-narration can facilitate language processing.•Embodiment can reveal suppressed emotions and advance the grieving process.•Peer support is crucial for making sense of unresolved pregnancy losses.

This article examines recipient-oriented narratives of pregnancy loss in the context of peer communication, focusing on the importance of face-to-face interaction to facilitate embodiment and advance the grieving process. The data revealed how representational gestures embedded in the discourse play a significant role in the sense-making process of unresolved experiences; narrators can involve recipients through their shared knowledge of lived similar experiences, and together they can analyze and interpret past emotions and events, facilitating the narrator's language processing and articulation of the loss. Furthermore, the complex interdependence between gestures and language illustrated the convoluted internal process of grieving and making sense of an unresolved loss.