Death of a Child

How We Heal After the Death of a Child

Monday, April 22, 2024

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 […]

Bereavement, Death of a Child, Open to Hope

About Your Room: Letting Go of a Son’s Belongings

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Dismantling the Room Your blue camo backpack hung on the back of your desk chair with your Pittsburgh Penguins baseball cap on top of it for eight years. It was as you left it on the last day of school before the Christmas holidays in 2012. It was September 2020; I was in your room with a mug of dark roast and my phone. We had decided to replace the wall-to-wall carpeting upstairs. The installers were coming the next day and I was on deadline. Both Dad and Iz were out of town. The task of dismantling your room came […]

Bereavement, Death of a Child

Discovering Lifelines While Grieving

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Lifelines can rescue you after the death of a loved one. I understand this firsthand. Why? Because my thirteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was treated for one year for a rare pediatric bone cancer, and despite her valiant battle, she died in my arms 365 days after her diagnosis. After Elizabeth’s death, I nearly drowned in grief. My first lifeline was tossed out to me by family and friends. They held me, comforted me, brought me meals, and sometimes simply sat by my side listening to my keening cries. They drove me to appointments when I was too weak to drive, walked […]

Death of a Child, Self Care

Finding Your Way From Loss to Peace

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

The ending of this “story” is happy…. There is joy to be found in realizing that long-held, shame-filled, buried grief, however painful, can be uncovered, looked at, handled tenderly, shared, and brought into the light for healing. It’s never too late. —Hannah, age 80, writing about a deep and painful secret. Secret Grief from Early in Life A friend recently asked me if I would help create a service of remembrance to help her 80-year old mother, Hannah, heal a secret grief she had carried for 60 years. Hannah told me that she became pregnant at 19 and contracted German […]

Death of a Child, Your Grief

Breaking the Rules of Grief

Monday, June 30, 2014

An excerpt from the Introduction of Breaking the Rules of Grief, A Bereaved Mother’s Journey.  By Shannon Harris I should begin by warning you that there will be no substantial evidence supporting the ideas in this book. These are all my conflicted thoughts in black and white, perfectly spaced in Times New Roman size 12. Should my ideas mean something more than that to someone, great. If not, that’s okay too. After reading countless books and articles on grief and bereavement for parents who have lost a child, I think I’ve had enough information. Not that I am an expert by […]

Death of a Child

God’s Plan in the Grocery Store

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

With my whole heart I can say that I am not afraid of anything in life now that I’ve watched my son die.  Nothing can ever be harder than that moment in time; therefore, I have nothing to fear.  Death itself no longer scares me, either, knowing he is waiting for me on the other side. There are, however, a few land mines that I run into every once in a while that catch me off guard.  Explosions of anger, frustration or sadness that turn me inside out and make me come unglued. You know what I’m talking about.  You’re […]

Death of a Child

The Fear of Forgetting

Friday, July 12, 2013

Since my daughter died just after turning four years old, one of my biggest fears has been that she will be forgotten. But lately, I’ve been asking myself: What does that really mean? What am I really scared of? The idea that she will be forgotten is actually two separate fears. The first is that due to the notion of “out of sight, out of mind,” friends and even family will stop thinking of her and, in essence, “forget her”. In reality, this is the natural course of life. I have beloved relatives and dear friends who have passed, and […]