The death of a child is so profound, it’s like no other loss. There’s no such thing as getting over the death of a child. Instead, bereaved parents must learn to adapt to a new life without our child’s physical presence. It’s part of the long, slow process of healing after the death of a child.

Devastating Pain

If you’re never fully healed after a child’s death, how can you gauge your healing progress?

The intense pain after my 4-year-old daughter’s death felt devastating and unbearable. The most common question from newly bereaved parents in child loss support groups is some version of, “How long will this pain last? Will it ever end?”

The answer to that question is complicated because grief is a very individual experience. Like snowflakes, no two grief journeys will ever be the same. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. There’s no standard timeline. Due to varying factors, some parents just learn to adapt faster than others.

I see three major turning points when looking back at my own grief journey. These milestones are markers of when I was able to shift my perspective to better adapt to a life without my child.

Healing Milestone 1: Separating Thoughts of Child from Death

For the first three years, my grief was almost entirely focused on the pain and trauma of her death. I was trapped in endless questions of “What if?” and “Why?” So much so, I began to fear I was starting to forget all the smaller details of her short life. It felt as if I was starting to forget her. The idea of losing her all over again was terrifying.

I realized I had to emotionally separate my daughter from the day she died.

By focusing solely on my pain, I was losing sight of what I was actually grieving the loss of: the love and joy she had brought into my life. I decided I could no longer let the devastation of her death overshadow the beauty of her life. As I focused my thoughts to all my happy memories of her, the severity of my pain began to lessen. That fundamental shift allowed me to start better adjusting to a life without her physical presence.

Healing Milestone 2: Forgiving

My daughter drowned in 2009. For years after her death, my overwhelming guilt intensified the pain of my grief. I felt I didn’t deserve any form of happiness in a world in which I didn’t keep her safe. I had failed at my most important job.

For years, grief counselors and bereaved parents told me her death was a tragic accident. They said I should let go of my guilt. Most of the time when we let our children out of our sight, they’re fine. Only on rare occasions they’re not. Logically, I understood this rationale, but emotionally I wasn’t in a place where I could let go of my guilt. After all, she was only four and it was my job to protect her. I begged for her forgiveness every time I went to the cemetery.

But something changed after I began to focus on her life instead of her death.

I had been obsessing on my failing to keep her safe on the day she died. But refocusing on memories of her reminded me of all the things I had done right as a mother. It dawned on me that I didn’t need my daughter’s forgiveness. I needed to forgive myself. Just as her death cannot overshadow her beautiful life, I decided my failure on that day should not define the entirety of mine.

While I will always feel some level of guilt, my decision to forgive myself paved the way for allowing happiness back into my life. After all, I still have four wonderful living children and a loving, supportive husband. In cultivating happiness once again, the level of my day-to-day pain lessened even more.

Healing Milestone 3: Acknowledging the Present

Bereaved parents don’t just lose a child. We lose the person we used to be and can never be again. Our hopes and dreams for our child are now shattered forever. And in the midst of being crushed by grief, many bereaved parents lose relationships and friendships we once thought would last the rest of our lives.

The world we once knew is suddenly gone. Many of us desperately want it back. We want to go back to being the person we were; back to a time when pain didn’t suffocate every minute of the day. In my case, I wanted to return to the illusion that I had some amount of control over what happens to me.

Like many others, I couldn’t bring myself to let go of the idea that I could reclaim my old life. Obviously, my daughter would no longer be a part of it, but I thought that somehow I could otherwise go back to the way things were. I fought grief as if it could somehow be defeated.

After I wrote down all my memories of my daughter, I started to journal about my grief.

This allowed me to see that I could never defeat grief.

Journaling showed me that my grief could transform from searing pain to a dull ache…but it could never fully go away. I will never stop longing for my daughter and feeling a sense of loss.

I finally decided to stop fighting grief by coming to terms with the fact that her death has changed me and my life in ways that cannot be undone. And when I did that, I began to see that some of the changes in me were, in fact, good. I learned more about myself and my needs in a few short years than I had in the entirety of my life prior to her death. My grief led me to grow as a person and begin to cultivate a new life that focused on what matters most to me.

Ten Years Later

It’s been over a decade since my child’s death.

While my grief can still occasionally intensify and overcome me, most days the dull ache of missing her is easily managed. I’ve learned to focus more on the present moments of day-to-day life, which makes my pain barely noticeable most of the time.

I still think of her every day. That is how I keep her present in my life. But these days, thoughts of my daughter are filled with love, not pain. And that’s my definition of healing.

Read more from Maria: Letting Go of Things That Belonged to My Daughter – Open to Hope