grief myth

After the death of my daughter six and a half years ago I wrote: “I will never get over this.” This still holds true to some extent. However, I’m no longer in the despair that led me to make over-generalized statements about healing and sentences that implied I had the power of premonition.

Healing – no way!

The topic of healing after child loss is loaded. Loaded with personal definitions, ideas, and expectations from self and others. It is also emotionally loaded with the intensity of the traumatic life-changing event of the death of your child. A father in my first grief support group said: “I don’t want to heal because the pain is my only connection to my daughter”.

Healing – at least in my view and experience – is possible. Before jumping to conclusions or entering into an argument, you would need to ask me: What do you mean by ‘healing is possible?’

Ask yourself: What do you believe about healing? What is healing? What does it mean when used as a noun (the healing), as a verb (I heal) or in its progressive form (I am healing)? Definitions are personal and are based on what we’ve learnt, been influenced by and the myths we’ve been fed.

The most suitable definition I found is: “healing means to alleviate a person’s distress or anguish”.

Healing is personal

In the same way we individually define healing, we also heal in our very own personal way. What is supportive and helpful to me, might not be for my partner.

I processed the loss of my daughter a lot through my writing. First, it was by writing personal emails and notes on Facebook. I just needed to find words and express myself, initially not with the purpose of letting people know but to clarify things for myself. In the beginning, it was a safe way to talk to people without having to reply to their responses. The distance between the writer and the reader was my safe place.

With my mother’s suicide, I chose a completely different path: I joined a group of family survivors of suicide victims for a year-long group. It was intense, intimate, deep and very much worth every minute we spent together. I had also spent a few hours in grief group sessions after the loss of my daughter, but this was a different experience.

Healing expectations

In many cases, those who have expectations (or wishes) about our healing have not experienced the loss of a child. Even our own expectations, which we can hear in statements like “will this ever get better” or “when will I be better”, are based on an experience (pre-child loss) that is not comparable to the one we are having right now (post child loss).

Far too often the emotional healing after child loss is compared to physical healing from a wound or illness. This is so vastly different, there should be different words!

Healing is an activity

Writing, finding words for my experience, and especially the time it took to go through the memories, talking to other parents, was what helped me most.

The second most helpful was when I translated my first book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple from English into German and the realization that came from the changes that had already happened within that year since writing it.

And of course, being a beacon of light for others through my heart-work with events such as May We All Heal as part of the Grieving Parents Support Network.

What is helping you alleviate your distress and anguish?

How long will I be grieving the death of my child? How long will my grief last? When will I feel better? Is there a time to grieve? Is it true that I need to ‘move on’ or ‘get over it’? What does ‘moving on’ look like?

How much time to grieve do I have?

I have been asked these and similar questions for years. Just last week, a member of the Grieving Parents Support Network asked:

“Hi. Do you know of any articles about ‘how long the grieving process is for losing a child’? I was told ‘fresh grief’ takes about 2 years and another said it takes 5 years. My adult daughter passed away 6.5 months ago.

When I post something about her on Facebook one was telling me I need to move on – that’s what my daughter would want me to do. Others haven’t been quite so blunt, but the message is still clear.

These comments hurt and make me angry. What shall I do? Ignore them or try to respond with a message about how hard it is to lose a child and that it takes a long time? I don’t know what to do.”

The question showed me a couple of things:

Comparing grief is something we all have done at some point.

“But you’ve only had a miscarriage.”
“I experienced the same when my grandpa died.”
“My stillbirth was … in comparison to my miscarriages.”
“I cannot imagine losing a teenager.”

All these are comparisons: a miscarriage versus a stillbirth or neonatal death, the experience of the death of a child versus the death of grandpa, my stillbirth versus my miscarriages, the loss of a teenager versus another loss (or no loss).

Invalidating

Statements that include a comparison are often uttered without any bad intention. They are often an opinion of someone from what they understand or not understand from their vantage point in life.

In many cases, they are helpless attempts at dealing with the unimaginable grief that follows a loss, your own or someone else’s.

In many cases, however, a comparison is invalidating someone’s experience and feelings. No matter the kind of loss, it involves grief and pain.

We cannot truly know what someone else is going through, even if our losses involve the same person or the person in the same relationship (for example grandpa).

Even after an extensive exchange with our partner in regard to the loss of our child we only know what they have shared. And even then, we only have ‘what we understood’ and not ‘what they truly meant’.

Gaining perspective

If the comparison helps you to see something good and helpful for yourself, then it can be helpful – but only to yourself.

For example, Katja, one of the contributors of the book ‘Surviving My First Year of Child Loss’ said in an interview: “I know the murderer of my child, I know he’s in jail and I’ve got a trial coming up. Some other parents don’t have that option.”

Another example is comparing your own losses. I know that my daughter’s neonatal loss has impacted me in a completely and utterly different way to my miscarriages and my mother’s suicide.

Even the different miscarriages have not caused the same pain, physical as well as emotional.

Does it support your healing?

Comparing your grief experience within the different losses you have experienced can help you gain perspective and understand your varied responses given the different losses.

Comparing your grief to someone else’s grief is only helpful for you if it supports your healing.

It’s not something you need to share with that someone as that again would potentially invalidate their experience.

In my work as a grief psychotherapist, the most important question I ask is: Does it support your healing?

That’s when you know.