What’s in a word? Some words can be very powerful, especially when you’re grieving. For someone whose parent has recently died, the first word they associate with their parent might be constant. It’s usually defined as dedicated, devoted, faithful, loyal, steadfast, steady. For many adult children who have had a parent die, those are some of the words that immediately spring to mind when they describe their parent. They might also say they thought of their parent “as an angel,” “a best friend,” “best support.”
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Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
'Parent Loss' Tagged Posts
Losing a parent can be one of the most traumatic events that an adult will go through. It can also present a rare opportunity for potent changes in life. When we lose a parent one of the ways we heal is by finding benefits and gifts that come out of a traumatic loss and the healing process. Often, this requires that we…
Loss! We have all experienced losing a loved one but losing a parent is a unique loss and one that is often discounted. Anyone who has had a parent die knows that feeling of profound sadness, the feeling of being overwhelmed, the thoughts of, “Oh No! What now?”
There is a prevailing attitude in our cultural messages that the death of a parent is a natural course of events and we need to “just get over it!”
A few questions and answers
I didn’t have a good relationship with my mother. Now that she’s died, I’m confused — why do I feel the grief and guilt that I feel?
Relationships are often complicated, especially when there has been conflict. When a relationship is complicated, volatile, even abusive, there is a grief process that needs attention. Your grief is a way of expressing feelings that perhaps did not get that attention while your parent was alive. Perhaps the guilt you feel is a way of acknowledging that you would have liked a different relationship. In difficult relationships with parents, there is often a lot that was unsaid. In a grief group, you have the opportunity to process those unsaid words in a safe environment. You may find that you are not alone and more importantly you and your feelings find support.
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It’s hard to imagine there could be anything beneficial about losing a parent, and at some point in our lives, both of our parents. The good news is as “survivors” we can and often do experience, after the death of a parent, many new opportunities leading to a discovery that the ultimate shape of our lives is in our hands. When we…
Grief is a natural reaction to death. Grief can be intensified when a death is untimely — when a young person or a child dies. Grief and additional emotions can be doubly intensified and more when a young person dies by suicide.Iris Bolton experienced this first hand when her 20-year-old son, Curtis Mitchell Bolton, died by suicide. She went on to describe her reaction…
Click here for more information about HOPE Connection’s Parent Loss Groups. The loss of a parent is a unique event, unlike the death of anyone else. When we are an adult and one of our parents dies, we are changed in three fundamental ways. Here is an overview of those changes and advice for grieving this very special loss.
When we lose a parent, especially when we are adults ourselves, the loss can be, in a sense, “discounted.” That is, it is such a natural course of events that somehow we are supposed to be immune from grieving the loss. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our parents will always be our parents. And no matter our age when we…