Parenting Through Grief and Loss

Parenting through Grief and Loss

My mother passed away when I was 10 years old and my little sister was only 3. It was tragic, unexpected and took everyone by surprise. Our entire family was rattled. I come from a long line of survivors, family on both sides having fled their respective homelands. They were resilient and stoic, byproducts of stuffing down the trauma and pain of religious and cultural persecution. And because of this, they folded the loss of my mother into that great well of sorrow and buried it deep within. There was little in the way of allowing their grief to be seen.

And while they did not encourage me to grieve, there was one overarching element that my father and all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and great aunts and uncles displayed and exercised which carried me through my great loss and that is LOVE.

I never for a moment questioned whether I was valued or cared for. Collectively, my family was always loving and supportive. For this, I am very grateful.

Now, as an adult, I recognize that no one ever modeled how to grieve. The people I loved and those who loved me, sheltered me from their grief as though nothing had happened. As a child, I learned to keep my pain to myself. Seeing through their masks I couldn’t bear to burden any of these people that I loved with my own pain and grief. So, I too learned to stuff it down or as I like to say, shelf it.

And as I went about living my adult life, I was surprised when grief flew off that dusty shelf and bit me in the ass. And now I’ve done the work that I wish I had begun when I was 10 years old and to be honest, I’m still doing the work.

I am all too aware of my mother’s mother in having lost her only child. At the age of 32, my father’s thick black hair, his eyebrows, and mustache faded to gray over the course of days following my mother’s death. These people were grieving, but how could they take care of themselves and me?

I’ve spent a lot of time researching grief and how to help yourself and others who are grieving. I want to share how to parent through loss with you and I want to make it easy to reference and easy to remember, because, let’s face it, this shit is complicated and what we need are the most basic tools.

I created a brief guide of How to Parent through Loss to make this simple to remember and follow.