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Grieving the loss of a child

When your child dies, the loss may affect many parts of your life and your sense of yourself. Your child may have been a baby, a young child, a teenager or an adult with a life and family of their own. Whatever their age, they were still your child.

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There is no single response to this loss. Your relationship may have been close, complicated, distant or estranged. The death may have followed a long illness or happened suddenly. You may have been closely involved in your child’s life or had little or no contact with them for many years.

 

Your grief may also include a future you had imagined: experiences that will not now happen, conversations that cannot take place, or changes you had expected to see in your child’s life and your own.

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What might this feel like?

The death of a child can bring many different feelings, memories and questions, which may change over time. Your experience may also be affected by your relationship with your child, the circumstances of their death and the responses of people around you. You might:

• miss your child intensely while also experiencing anger, guilt, numbness or other feelings

• return repeatedly to what happened and whether anything could have been different

• find other people’s assumptions about parenthood or family difficult

• feel your child’s absence particularly strongly at birthdays, anniversaries, weddings or family occasions

• grieve experiences and stages of life you expected your child to have

• notice changes in relationships with a partner, other children or family members

• worry that talking about your child will upset others, or feel hurt when people avoid mentioning them

• find that your grief changes as you grow older or your family circumstances change.

 

Others may be grieving too. Your child’s siblings have lost a sibling, grandparents a grandchild, and a partner may be grieving the same child while experiencing the loss very differently.

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How might counselling help?

The death of a child can be difficult to talk about, particularly when people around you struggle to know what to say. You may also be trying to support other family members while living with your own grief.

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Counselling offers a confidential space where you can talk about your child, your relationship and the circumstances of their death. There is room for memories, anger, guilt, questions, lost hopes and feelings that may be difficult to share elsewhere.

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There is no expectation that you should leave your grief behind or reach a particular point. Counselling gives you time to explore what this loss means for you, at your own pace.