The Grief of Losing a Child

The Grief of Losing a

By Vanessa Hutton

Child

In 2004 when my son Luther died I wasn ’t a Clinical Mental Health Counselor. I was and I still am a Mother who lost her son. There ’ s no word that describes or identifies us as bereaved parents. We often become marginalized within society because we cannot contain the pain. It is as if society doesn ’t know what to do with us.

The thing people say to me most consistently in the 18 years since my son died is

“I don ’t know how you do it, I would die if that happened to me ” . It is painful to hear. The message is that we are supposed to kill ourselves. Death by suicide in the first three years is common for bereaved parents.

The research shows that the traumatic impact of the losing a child rewires your brain. This neurological rewiring literally changes your neurophysiological experience of life. Losing a child causes people to have ongoing PTSD responses rooted in this shift in the nervous system.

The research on the grief experience for bereaved parents is really disturbing. Essentially people who lose a child are at risk for an earlier death due to physical health problems. Bereaved parents die earlier than non bereaved parents. Often they die from cardiovascular disease. Which essentially means we die earlier than expected and usually from a broken heart. It makes sense.

I once read that losing a child is one of the worst things that can happen to a person but there was no list of the other things. Tornado? Natural Disaster? What is worse? I still don ’t know. What I do know is we feel desperately alone in our grief and many of us have intrusive thoughts about killing ourselves. And feel ashamed for thinking that way despite it being the normal response.

My experience as a Bereaved Parent has been crushing. The aftermath of the loss has been a mine field. Mostly because we are so changed. It has been my experience that the people around us don ’t recognize us so easily anymore. For many of us the world becomes very unfriendly.

No one knows what to say or do…………so they stop talking to us and eventually stop coming around to check on us. The devastation of our experience is too much for people who love us to witness. Seeing the devastation of your life reflected back to you in the eyes of a loved one can be so painful that isolation feels easier.

We lose friends and family because we are seemingly changed forever. The research shows and I will keep repeating it that we are changed because of the way the trauma impacts our nervous system. Literally it rewires our neurophysiological responses and the result is we show up differently.

We look like the same person but we aren ’t. My brother would say to people

“it’ s my sister but it’ s not my sister ” . He wasn ’t lying. I am his sister but I am not his sister. I am not the same person I was before my son died. I miss myself some days as much as I miss my son.

This is why my Facebook group Support for Bereaved Parents is so important to me. In the group I provide a safe place for bereaved parents to be real about their grief. My goal is to help bereaved parents to separate their grief from their trauma. In the group I provide tips and strategies for separating the trauma response from the grief experience.

I wrote a book when I was in the darkest part of my grief experience lost and alone. I needed someone to talk to. I turned to my computer as there was no Facebook or Instagram then. My book is called Strange, Changed and Rearranged: My journey into bereaved parenthood. The book is my grief experience, raw and real. I wanted people to really know how bad it gets. And to know that you can find the light again.

As the years passed my shame for not being able to overcome the loss increased as did my determination not to speak to people about how I was actually doing. In truth, my shame around not being able to cope with the loss was part of my trauma response. I am a child of the 80s, taking care of yourself before your frontal lobes were actually intact was part of our collective journey. So for many people like me, not being able to deal with the loss is overwhelming in and of itself.

There are things as a therapist that I want people to understand about their experience as a bereaved parent. You will be unable to be who you were before. It’ s not something that is easy to accept. The world will feel different, and you will respond to things in ways that feel bizarre sometimes.

The waves of grief come and go. You cannot predict it. The waves will come and go for years, decades even. This is why you must learn to separate your grief response from your trauma response. You are absolutely allowed to miss them and perform rituals for them and live in tribute to them whatever that looks like.

The timeline for grief is another important thing I want people to understand. The first year is a write off. You will be dissociated and out of your body in your trauma response. You may need medication to get through the first year and if you are questioning that talk to your doctor. Be aware that after the first year people often think you are doing just fine because a year seems like a long time to them.

Often the second year is worse than the first because you have been holding your breath for a year thinking that once you make it through the first year it will be easier. Then it gets harder……and Wow. The isolation of the experience sets in. The third year is often where we isolate and turn away from thinking that people will be able to help us.

For anyone dealing with grief it is important to discuss the concept of secondary losses. Secondary losses are the things we lose after we lose our children. Such as, friends, jobs, homes, family relationships and more. Usually around the 5th year we start to be willing to choose life again. At that point our lives can feel like a wasteland as we wake up from the worst of our grief.

We might feel the sun on our face again and the desire to enjoy things even though our children are not able to. However, everyone experiences the timeline for grief differently. This is a general guide so people reading can know they are on the right track no matter what the people around them are saying.

We go slower to go further and we make small changes because they add up to big changes over time. Grief is normal but you do not have to live in the prison of your trauma responses. I have videos on my youtube channel that anyone can watch to understand the nature of trauma and how to increase your well being when you have a dysregulated nervous system. There are also videos that teach people all about how to easily Regulate their nervous system.

In my practice I use a 3 stage model in my therapeutic approach. The first stage involves learning how to regulate your nervous system The second stage is looking at the limiting beliefs and behaviors that you want to change. The third stage is implementing and integrating the changes. Trauma robs us of the right to choose and the healing involves being able to choose.

It is important for anyone to know that healing from trauma is a doorway to becoming your authentic self. I really believe that being your authentic loving self is how we heal the world. When you have experienced trauma and finally are able to choose to heal your self things become magical. For me they did.

I began to think that if I could survive Luther ’ s death I could likely do anything I set my mind to. I learned the importance of living a joyful life. I learned the importance of being seen and loved for who you really are. I also learned that when your nervous system becomes your friend and guide, life changes in ways that are beautiful and worthwhile. It’ s hard to choose life again in the wake of losing a child but not impossible.

Vanessa Hutton, I live on Vancouver Island in a small community. I work full time with Island Health as a Mental Health Clinician. My son died in 2004 and it changed my whole life. I have two living children. My boys are 11 and 17. I live a pretty simple life. I have a private therapy practice as well. I help people heal from trauma. I specialize in grief, anxiety, depression, PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder. All of my courses are available for free on my youtube Channel. I can be reached at thewellbeingbeing@gmail.com Vanessa & her son Luther