This an excerpt from my eBook “How to Help Your Grieving Friend”, it is available for purchase HERE. If you find this portion helpful, you will probably find the book to be a useful resource in navigating grief and ways to support someone in their time of loss<3.
When your friend loses their child, it changes many things about them. They lose their innocence and joy of life. Child loss changes their perspective, their emotions, their outlook. It impacts their mental health. Friendships and other relationships can change drastically. The person they once were is gone, right along with their old life. Think of how you are changed and shaped by the events and things that happen in your life, and you will start to understand that your friend is deeply and profoundly changed from the loss of their child.
This can be very hard as a friend because you want to help, but your friend might become very emotional and seem like they are all over the map. I want to think of your friend as really fragile. In grief and loss, they become so fragile. They feel broken, and their life is shattered. Not only are they grieving the loss of their child, they are also grieving the loss of themselves.
They grieve the loss of their innocence. They grieve the loss of their naivety in life. They grieve the loss of hope for the future, loss of a future with their child. They grieve the loss of the carefree, childlike joy inside, the loss of themselves. They grieve the loss of their old life, the good life before their child died. Loss of friends, loss of normality, loss of faith and trust. They grieve the loss of a foundation and sureness that everything will be okay. They grieve a loss of sense of self and who they will become.
There is so much loss wrapped up in the loss of a child. Please do not expect your friend to be the same person. They are changed forever. They will never be the same person. They will go through crazy ups and downs, and all they need is love and support. They do not need others asking them when they are going to get better, or when will they be their old selves again.
When you lose a child you are changed on such a deep level that there is no going back to your old self. That is how life is. We are shaped by our experiences. We don’t need to be defined by our experiences, but they are ours, and there is no changing them. So please- just let your friend be who they are becoming, and support them along the way.
It’s easy for you to go back to your normal, same life, but your friend’s life is shattered and broken. There is no going back to their old life. There is no stepping right back in and picking up where they left off. Everything is destroyed. They need to do the work of rebuilding a life around that brokenness, but they will be forever changed. If you can support and love them where they are at, you can be an amazing friend. It can take a long time to learn how to carry the grief they have. They need the love and support.
Don’t Tell Them to Get Over It
The average time that society in general thinks someone should “get over” their loss is about 6 weeks. In those 6 weeks there is a lot more grace and love, but after that people have a harder time having compassion and patience for the marathon and struggle of grief. In 6 weeks, you’ve hardly begun to process the finality and truth of your loss. In 6 weeks, many times there is so much fog, you are just struggling to get through day to day. 6 weeks is not the end of grief or a time to get over.
There is no timeline in grief, and it’s so hard to understand when you haven’t experienced it yourself. For some people, they don’t even start to realize the full finality and weight of their loss until a couple years, or even many years later. Each person will grieve in their own way, and in their own time. All you can do is be there. When you lose a child, there really is no “getting over it”. I like to think of it more as, “it’s possible to learn to live with it”. It’s possible to learn to carry your grief, but I will not ever forget my daughter, and I don’t think your friend will ever forget their child.
Please don’t rush your friend, or put expectations on them and their grief. If you were to put yourself in their shoes, which child would you like to say goodbye to? And which child would you like to be told to get over? It’s so incredibly difficult to understand this, especially as more time passes from their child’s death, but expecting them to forget their child and never talk about them again is a cruel and painful expectation.
When I’ve talked to someone who has not experienced lost, I’ve realized the depths of grief that cannot be understood. There is this need for those who haven’t experienced loss to see their friend happy and joyful again. They want their friend to find the end of the rainbow, and check off their grief as something they’ve conquered. I’ve thought a lot about it and I’ve come to this conclusion: someone who has not experienced loss cannot fully understand that this will never go away.
A grieving person can make their life bigger around their loss, but that loss will be there forever. This joy will never quite be the same as it was. It’s a little jaded, scarred, broken. Joy is still possible, but it has changed and evolved. Along with those scars and brokenness, I’ve learned a deeper meaning of joy as well. My experiences have taught me to cherish what I have. I’ve often thought that it has made me a deeper person, not as naive anymore.
This an excerpt from my eBook “How to Help Your Grieving Friend”, it is available for purchase HERE. If you find this portion helpful, you will probably find the book to be a useful resource in navigating grief and ways to support someone in their time of loss<3.
