The Journey Through Grief and Loss: Helping Yourself and Your Child When Grief Is Shared

By Robert Zucker

When adults face a significant loss, they must grapple with their own profound grief, and they are often called upon to nurture and support their grieving children. This is the first book to address this very common dual grieving challenge. As a practicing psychotherapist for twenty-nine years, Robert Zucker can offer parents and other concerned readers important insights into managing their own grief while supporting their grieving children. He offers:

• Understanding how adults and children grieve differently

• Learning how to explain the meaning of death to children

• Knowing what to do when grief gets complicated

• Deciding when they and/or their child need counseling

• Helping their family members stay connected with loved ones even after death.

For the countless parents who have tried blocking out their own grief in order to be available to their child, Robert Zucker provides a measure of comfort. This book will reassure readers that a grieving parent can still be an effective parent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2009
• ISBN: 9781429970495

Robert Zucker

ROBERT ZUCKER has been a licensed certified social worker in private practice for the past twenty-five years. He runs specialized bereavement groups and speaks frequently across the country. He is the author of The Journey Through Grief and Loss.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

It is a beautiful autumn day in the Connecticut countryside, where I am leading a weekend retreat for bereaved parents and siblings. At morning meeting, all of the children at the retreat, ranging in age from five to eighteen, are encouraged to think about any concerns they’ve had since the death of their brother or sister, and, at some point during the day, to go to the lobby of the retreat center where they will find a cardboard box sitting on a side table, alongside a stack of paper and some pencils. This is their Concerns Box, and they are told to write down any worries they have on a piece of paper and place them anonymously inside the box. No names are required in hopes that the children will feel free to write about anything that is worrying them. Later, after dinner, about twenty children sit in a circle as I draw from the Concerns Box. One by one I read aloud what they have written, and attempt to address each child’s concern. Three themes emerge. First, several of the children blame themselves for the death of their brother or sister. One six-year-old has written, I think I made my sister die. Second, many of the children feel abandoned by their parents, and even, in some cases, that they are in competition with their dead sibling. A nine-year-old girl asks, Why does my mommy wish that I died instead of my brother? And finally, there are a number of children in the circle who are concerned that their parents are not coping well. One teenager writes, I worry about my father not getting through this.

As I listen to the concerns of these young people, it strikes me how grieving adults can become so overwhelmed that they lose sight of their obligations to their grieving children. The idea for this book was born three years ago out of that retreat as I realized that there needed to be a single book for grieving adults who required support and concrete advice for themselves, but who also desired to learn how they could help their grieving children.

I’ve written The Journey Through Grief and Loss because parents like you need to get beyond hopelessness and despair and find new hope for you and your child. If, like many adults, you grew up in a family that never discussed death and grief and assumed children didn’t grieve at all, or if your child’s expression of grief has been heightening your own pain and you can’t bear your child’s sorrow any longer, then this book is for you. If you’ve tried blocking out your own grief in order to be available to your child, and yet your child can still see how much you’re suffering, then this book is for you. If you can barely manage to keep your own head above water, and sometimes you resent your children for demanding more of you now than ever before, or if you are so bereft that you sometimes forget about everyone else around you, including the children in your life, then this book is for you.

Families have much to gain once adults master the skills to manage their own grief and to support their grieving children. Children discover that they can count on loving adults to guide them through even the toughest times imaginable. Parents and children understand and appreciate one another more than ever before. And eventually, families can discover new strengths, and hope can be restored. Nothing can take away the pain of grief, but I hope you can use this book like a wise and caring friend, to help you gain the wisdom and strength to meet the challenges ahead.

This book is divided into five parts. Part One is an overview of the road ahead of you. In addition to considering some of the basic differences between adult and childhood grief, I will break grief into three phases: Embarking on the Journey (early grief), The Second Storm, and The Search for Meaning.

During early grief you’re lost and overwhelmed. It is a time when you can’t fully believe what is happening, and you struggle with periods of anxiety and, perhaps, numbness. In the Second Storm you may face feelings so intense that it will seem as if you’re going crazy. You’ll enter the Search for Meaning once the storm has settled a bit and you’re better able to consider life’s bigger questions and how your loss has affected your feelings about the future.

Part Two explores early grief in greater depth. You will gain a better understanding of how grief is affecting you and your child, ways of taking care of yourself, strategies for helping your child understand what has actually happened, and techniques for helping your child start to grieve well. Included in this section are suggestions for determining whether or not your child should attend a funeral, as well as strategies for you and your child to return to work and school as smoothly as possible.

In Part Two, as in all subsequent sections of the book, when strategies for understanding and assisting young people are discussed, they are addressed according to age groups: preverbal, two- to five-year-olds, six- to nine-year-olds, ten- to twelve-year-olds, and adolescents.

Part Three explores the second phase of grief, which I call the Second Storm. As the name suggests, this phase of grief will shake you up like a tornado, but you’ll learn to find your own footing so that you can help your child express and share the overwhelming feelings that are likely to surface. This section also debunks two common myths about grief: that everyone grieves in a similar way, and that grievers feel helpless all the time. In fact, there are actually ways you can learn to grieve well together. Part Three will help you identify and understand your own way of grieving, as well as your child’s. This section will also explain what to do if your style of parenting doesn’t quite meet your child’s needs at this difficult time.

Part Four will explore the third phase of grief, the Search for Meaning. You’ll learn how you and your child can come out of the storm prepared to consider what your loss has meant for you and your family, what you each have learned, and how you and your child have been changed as a result of your circumstances. This section looks at ways to keep memories alive through a range of informal activities for you and your child that will encourage reminiscence. This section also looks at ways you and your child may begin to feel the presence of your loved one over time.

Part Five will help you determine when it is advisable to seek additional support beyond the scope of this book, for you and/or your child, and how to identify the resources you’ll need in your community. There is also a list of grief support centers, organized by state.

The annotated bibliography in the back of the book will provide further help to you and your child as you grieve together.

You and your child have begun a journey you never asked to take. It will be difficult and sometimes frightening, but if you walk together, hand in hand, I believe you will find solace, hope, new joys, and, perhaps, reasons to celebrate again. I invite you to take this book with you as you embark on the difficult road ahead.

PART ONE

PREPARING FOR

THE JOURNEY

1

Death Changes Everything

The world as you once knew it is shattered by a death that has left a profound void in your life. Whether this death was sudden or you had time to prepare, you are probably feeling disoriented and in deep shock. As a parent, however, there is a particular gravitas to your grief: A child you love is sharing your loss. Even as this most profound of losses is shaking you to the core, you must somehow rise to the challenge and assist your child, who is also grieving.

Like adults, children grieve when someone close to them dies. Whether your child has lost a parent or a sibling, a grandparent or a dear friend, you need to be there to provide support, guidance, reassurance, honesty, and patience. Most important, you need to provide a strong and loving presence.

There Are Many Faces of Grief

The first step of your journey through grief is to appreciate that you and your child may grieve differently. There are as many ways to grieve as there are grievers, so don’t try to fit your grief into anyone else’s mold or expectations. While some grievers cry day and night, others feel completely numb. While some are exhausted and feel the need to nap frequently, others may stay awake for days. Some may be ravenously hungry while others have no appetite at all. Some need to talk while others long for solitude, and some experience heightened libido while others lose all interest in sex. In later chapters we’ll look closely at various styles of adult grief, for now it’s simply important to remember that for both children and adults, normal grief has many faces.

How Children Perceive Death

Children grieve differently from adults. Up to the age of ten, they will typically have difficulty understanding what death means. There are three reasons why this is so:

1. Young children often aren’t given accurate, age-appropriate information about what death means.

2. It takes them a long time to fully appreciate the meaning of death itself, since they have trouble grasping some basic concepts about death.

3. Young children are likely to blame themselves unnecessarily whenever someone they love dies. This is called magical thinking.

Children of all ages tend to believe they have somehow caused the death, and correcting this view is different for younger ones than it is for preteens and teens.

Later in this book we’ll go over how to explain the facts of a death clearly and accurately to a child of any age. For now, we’ll simply focus on what helps kids of various ages understand the concept of death. In a quick