Death of a Child

We are all doing the best we can with the understanding, knowledge, awareness and skills we have.

When we lose someone special and unique we also lose the unique relationship we shared with him or her. As a Father you will have shared a ‘different’ relationship with your Child then if you are a Mother and vice versa; a grandmother, grandfather an aunty, uncle a sibling, cousin or a friend whatever the relationship each and every person grieving the loss of a loved one is suffering a truly unique personal experience.

There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to work through your loss and arrive at a place of ‘Gracious Remembering’; (Parents in Northern Ireland coined this phrase because so many of their children’s lives have been lost; death sometimes a daily experience at the heights of the IRA conflicts, shared by John Etok). Whilst the loss of your Child is truly individual and unique; grief, usually has an overall pattern.

After the death many people have probably told you ‘time heals’ the problem with this statement is that it implies that when time has passed your grief will have passed with it. Almost ‘as if’ our sorrow, despair and pain will have dissolved by some unseen energy; so when we find ourselves some time from our initial numbness and shock we may still be feeling deeply bereft and with some intensity. After the death of a Child the intensity may feel as if your Child has just died and the intensity hasn’t decreased at all this may go on for years.

What time does however is give us some breathing space until we gradually arrive at a time when we feel we may need to let go of the pain and sorrow and begin facing our here and now living. We may gradually come to realise that we owe it to ourselves, our loved one’s who are still sharing our life and to the Child we have lost. Turning away from our despair and sorrow does not mean leaving our Child it means to let go of the pain, despair and sorrow we associate with their death.

Following the death of our beloved, an enormous change has taken place which cannot be undone; we begin to realise life can never be the same again. Reality tells you there is nothing which can be done to bring our loved one back; what we can do is begin to look at the way we think, feel and behave since our loss took place. With this realisation it is possible to discover new ways of being by becoming more aware, gaining understanding to what makes you ‘tick’ as an individual person and to discover within yourself strengths that you perhaps did not know existed or have not acknowledged before. And to remember your Child and all their beautiful qualities, strengths and gift they left you with.

To discover and achieve new strengths it may be necessary to raise our awareness, skills and knowledge. Counselling sessions are designed to offer you support, deeper clarity, insight, raise your self-awareness, make you think and tools to support your journey through your grieving process and into your future.

Please remember anything new and any change takes time and constructively undertaken one step at a time for lasting results; exploration, awareness and insight as described here needs to be thought about with imagination, respect and empathy towards others paying equal respect and empathy towards Self.

You have lost your Child’s physical body but your relationship can and does live on in your heart, mind and soul.

All rights reserved © Susan Stubbings August 2014