Parenting While Grieving

When you’re grieving a personal loss, it’s really hard to also take care of your little ones at home. Grief hits everyone differently, and we all have to deal with it as it comes. This poses a unique challenge for those trying to grieve while also raising children, both for the parent and the children. As a psychotherapist, I have helped countless youths and families move through grief after the death of a loved one. I’ve worked with many adults who still face challenges because at some point in their lives, their grief got “stuck.” I understand the importance of honoring death, grief, and sadness in one’s life, and I have found and come up with many tools to do so.

The Challenge of Parenting while Grieving

The ability to grieve a loved one while parenting another living being or beings is almost impossible. Most of the time, the person grieving, the parent, needs others to come in to help take care of basic tasks like food and cleaning, as the weight of mourning a loss and simultaneous caring for children is overwhelming. The helpers make it so that the mourning parties have space to just exist. And let’s not forget that often the kids are also grieving. Sometimes, the hardest part for kids who experience a loss (death of a close family member or friend, but not a primary parent or caregiver) is the “loss” of their parents who are still with them at the same time, while the parents are also working through their own grief.

Talking Through Little Kids’ Big Talking Through Little Kids’ Big Feelings

Kids’ nervous systems are wired to their parents. Kids can get frightened when they notice that their parents are off and have behavioral changes.. Now this does NOT mean that the adults should pretend everything is fine—these mixed signals can be even more confusing to kids.. However, there is a way, as a parent, to balance one’s own needs and journey through grief and make sure their kid gets their needs met at the same time. 

Most of the time, acknowledging what is happening and that it is ok to experience these feelings is enough to help your kid be less afraid of sudden changes. It is both amazing and challenging that kids will want to be close to their parents when they are sad. For example, our kid is very attuned to us and will want to spend time with the parent who is struggling. Ironically, this is also when we parents tend to need more breaks from parenting in order to tend to our own emotions. 

U.S. Cultural Norms for Grief

The fact is, most of us in the U.S.A. have not experienced others moving through grief. We get weird messages that tell us that if we aren’t impacted by death we are doing a “good job” and that prioritizing work and others means you are “strong.” These messages and the lack of examples in the media and in our personal lives contribute to many people in this country getting “stuck” in grief. Culturally, we rarely  know how to move through loss  or open ourselves to receiving care from others. 

As a culture, we are so terrified of addressing grief and sadness that we do some pretty bizarre things to avoid talking about it or to dismiss it entirely. This shows up in our interpersonal relationships and tends to add to the isolation and despair of those grieving. Instead of supporting  our friends and family members in mourning, we may awkwardly and possibly unwittingly avoid being around them or at least try not to bring up anything that would make them feel sadder or relive more loss. 

Well-meaning friends may even try to comfort the grief-stricken by saying something positive but misguided. 

The journey of grief is a wild ride, and what each person needs will change throughout this journey. This avoidance or cultural taboo surrounding grief can also show up as internalized messages for the grieving person who resists relying on others or asking for support. In fact, they actually need this support yet are encumbered by the cultural norms or their own personal baggage around “putting on a brave face” or being independent.

Things that Helped My Grief Journey

I am lucky that the funeral for my grandfather was done well. People came together, people cried and celebrated all of who he was. It was a multi-day event, with lots of family gatherings and even prompts on discussion topics and celebration of his life. The celebration of his life ended with a tree being planted in honor of my grandpa in his favorite place. My grandmother thanked every person who cried with us for their tears and told them this was a symbol of how much her husband meant to them. Her saying that to me was a powerful moment of grieving together.

I am glad that I had made the decision earlier to have multiple end-of-life talks with my grandparents, where we got to share and reflect on our relationship and their lives overall. I am glad that I had already worked through my own fears of asking and receiving help, so I could allow myself to receive the support my community gave me when the time came. Grief is overwhelming. The love and care that others give us can be what helps the most at times.

Memorials, gatherings can be done at anytime. I plan on creating multiple spaces a year for friends and family to grieve and remember our loved ones that we lost.

Talking About Death and Loss to Our Young Son

I made the tough decision not to have my son come to the funeral. I wanted that space for myself. He was so young that it would have been challenging for him not to have the attention he was used to from parents and other family members. However, I did want to do a kid-friendly memorial for him later. I asked around for ideas and came up with one that I ended up adapting on the day due to weather conditions. 

This is what we decided to do that worked for our family to help our child be connected with death, loss, and grief while still experiencing that all-important sense of connection—to his grieving parents, his grieving extended family, and even to the great-grandfather he also lost. As always, we continue to check-in with each other about loss or retell the stories that were created during a tough time. My hope is that my child will see how we can come together to grieve, and, thus, not be afraid of expressing grief throughout his life. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do things, and we will never be able to fully anticipate what our kids need. It’s about the check-ins and processing afterwards that allow us to move together as a family, and honor the complexity of needs each of us have during times of loss. 

I hope you find your way to move through your loss as family.