Grief is a powerful emotion

Having been encouraged to review the whole grieving process for work, I learnt that grief as an emotion can be felt over loss, not just of life, but dreams, and loss of what you once had, and do not have now. Though children may not understand death, they can still suffer from the grief of loss, and find it hard to deal with the strength of emotion which comes with it.

• It can come in waves.

• Can be present for years without incident, and then hit you unexpectedly.

• Every grief you go through creates a different response, a different intensity, with different triggers.

You may feel:

• Angry

• Frustrated

• As if the situation is not real

• Relief

• Closure

• More or less focused

• Energised

• Empty

A lot of the things children grieve over may seem unimportant to you, and definitely not require the volume or energy, they seem to put into doing it.

While they were young my girls followed the Kübler-Ross (1969) model of grief quite closely, but they would go through the five different stages faster than most adults.

Each stage was usually accompanied by interesting facial expressions and a range of noises, on occasions they blended together or took place so fast, you would be hard pressed to realise that they were grieving at all!

Numb/shocked - Hey where has my toy gone? Why have you taken that off me?

Frustration - I cannot reach it; give it back I was playing with it.

Anger - It was mine you had no right taking it away from me!

Sorrow - There is nothing else to play with, what will I do now?

Relief - Oh it is time for lunch, never mind.

Seeing something, hearing a certain sound, smelling a certain smell, can set us off, take us back to a time and place we are no longer at. What you think about controls your emotions, thinking about sad thoughts can cause your eyes to water; then again thinking about happy ones can too.

Since losing my mother I found I could no longer watch a Christmas parade, or go to a school assembly, without my eyes tearing up. I cannot explain why. It just happens, it should be a happy time but it takes me back to my childhood, takes my thoughts unconsciously to my parents, then to my mother and the fact that she is not able to be there, and will never get to join us again, or see my children enjoying themselves.

Yep that has set my eyes off again… Happy, proud and sad all at once, no wonder being a parent moves you.

Want to learn more about my musings on the effect of grief and support on your role as a parent, then check out my second book, PARENTING MOVES PEOPLE.

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