Children’s Grief Awareness Week

Today is Children’s Grief Awareness Day, a global day designed to help us all become more aware of the needs of grieving children — and of the benefits they obtain through the support of others.

It is also the start of Children’s Grief Awareness Week (19th – 25th November 2015) here in the UK.

Children’s Grief Awareness Week 2015 is an initiative launched by the Childhood Bereavement Network, the UK body for support groups in the grief and bereavement sector, and Grief Encounter, one of the UK’s leading bereavement charities.

The theme this year is

‘SUPPORTING PARENTS AND CARERS, SUPPORTING GRIEVING CHILDREN’

The aim is to bring home the message that the first line of support for grieving children is those closest to them, and that we all have a part to play in supporting parents and carers in their vital role.

Key messages from the Childhood Bereavement Network:

• 1 in 29 school age children in the UK have been bereaved of a parent or sibling. It is estimated that 24,000 parents die each year leaving dependent children.
• After the death of someone close, children need support in their grief, nurture, and continuity, helping them weave together the threads of their past and their future. The care they get from those close to them is one of the biggest factors affecting how they learn to live with the loss.
• It can be a daily struggle for parents and carers to support their children when they are grieving themselves.
• Advice from parents and carers who have been through this include ‘trust your instincts’ and ‘don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it’
• Parents shouldn’t have to cope alone. Family, friends, colleagues, schools and the government all have a part to play in supporting parents and carers to support their grieving children.
• Specialist support services should be available in all local areas for all grieving children and their families that need them – wherever they live and however they have been bereaved – helping them realise they are not alone.

Oh how I wish that I could read the above statistics and information as an ‘outsider’ – merely as a curious onlooker.

Sadly not, as in January 2014 my children joined the ranks of the bereaved.

As a consequence of this bereavement I, a qualified mental health worker and a trained family support worker, struggled to function. Many days I could hardly get out of bed or get dressed. I struggled to complete the most basic of tasks. Not only was cooking even a simple meal beyond me, eating was also something that I found very difficult – I didn’t begin to experience physical hunger again until at least eight months after Leah died. Yet I had the responsibility of parenting children who were grieving and hurting very deeply.

I particularly like and really connect with Brené Brown’s Parenting Manifesto taken from her excellent book Daring Greatly, but there is one line in particular that has been hugely challenging for me:

“Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it.”

I’m telling you now, that there is one thing worse than experiencing the constant pain that lodged in my heart after Leah died; it is looking into my ten year old daughter’s eyes and seeing the pain and confusion in her eyes and knowing that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that I could do to make this better and take away her pain.

There even were times in the early days when I tried to avoid eye contact because it was too painful for me to witness her pain. Imagine what it must feel like to be ten years old and have your parent, on whom you depend for emotional security, struggle to make eye contact with you, especially when you have just lost a sister whom you loved more than life itself and your family life has changed beyond recognition?

This is the reality of childhood grief.

For some children it’s even worse than this. Many families have spoken to me of their experiences of coping (or not coping) after the death of a child or parent. I’ve heard some devastatingly sad stories.

Adults who lost a sibling when they were a child, have told me of how their parents ceased to function after the death of a child and how these adults are still coming to terms with the emotional fallout from this.

I’ve been told about children being sent away to stay with neighbours and relatives while the adults in the house grieved – these children now grown up are still struggling to process their childhood loss.

I’ve heard of families breaking down as grieving parents tried to numb the pain in all sorts of maladaptive ways including alcohol misuse. I know of one young girl who had to be placed in foster care after the death of her sibling because her grieving mother became unable to care for her. How devastating must that be?

We have been fortunate to have had excellent support from family and friends. Last year, when it was too painful for my youngest and I to do things on our own together, there were others who accompanied us on days out so that we could still do fun things together.

Friends and family have ministered to us every step of the way. Our school aged children have also received excellent emotional support at their respective schools. After Leah died our youngest daughter’s P6 Primary School class supported her in many ways. One of the most tangible of these was by gifting her with a beautiful customized Memory Box in which she can store precious items that remind her of her sister. It was a most appropriate and thoughtful gift.

Since Leah died last year we as a family have received input from Youthlife, the N.I. Children’s Hospice, the N.I. Cancer Fund For Children, Action Cancer, North West Counselling and from a Family Support Hub. From talking to other parents in online forums, the impression I get is that the support that is available to bereaved families in the UK is very much a “postcode” lottery, with some families apparently receiving little or no support. It has also been my experience that there is no coordinated mapping of services which means that even the professionals involved with a family are often not aware of what sources of support may be available. Oftentimes, it’s been other parents or ‘word of mouth’  that’s pointed me in the right direction.

It’s a long and difficult road though, we haven’t ‘arrived’ by any means. I sometimes think that grief is like an onion – there’s always another layer underneath.

#ChildrensGriefAwareness

The Gaping Hole of Grief

While we were staying at Daisy Lodge my husband asked me to come for a walk with him in Tollymore Forest Park. He wanted to show me something that he had discovered, which he felt was a metaphor for the effects of grief and loss in the life of a family.

I have written directly on the subject of grief on many occasions. Naturally, the theme of grief and loss runs through most of my blog posts, but some of those blog posts have been written almost exclusively about the effects of grief.

First, I wrote Grief – the Pain that Goes on Hurting, next came The Storm of Grief. After this, there was Grief Has No Rule Book, followed by Grief Has No Shortcuts. More recently I wrote Grief Really Is About The Small Stuff and Grief Creeps Up When You’re Least Expecting It and then Wave After Wave Crashes Over Me.

In my role as a volunteer with Youthlife and also in my paid employment as a Family Support Worker, I’ve learned that so many people are living with the effects of loss.

Abortion, miscarriage, infertility, neonatal death, child loss, sibling loss, loss of a spouse or parent, separation, divorce, repossession, loss of health, employment, a significant relationship or even one’s reputation.

Then there is the parent whose child has a disability, or whose child’s lifestyle is very different to the one that their parents would wish for them. Those parents often grieve deeply for the child that they once thought they had, as they learn to let go of the dreams and the plans that they started off with.

There are so many different types of loss and each one can be excruciatingly painful.

Sometimes people say to me “Oh my loss isn’t as bad as yours.”

Personally, I don’t think that comparisons are particularly helpful. When you’re grieving a significant loss and in deep pain, I don’t think that it matters whether your loss is more, or less, than anybody else’s. When you’re going through it, it just feels like the end of the world, or your world anyway.

So what did Horace want to show me in Tollymore Forest?

A large tree that had been uprooted in a storm.

As it fell, it had stripped the surrounding trees of their branches.

All around this tree was devastation and a tangled mess.

It left a gaping hole in the forest bed.

Horace says that this is a metaphor for grief and loss.

The bigger the tree, the greater the impact.

The greater the loss, the greater the devastation.

Some of the smaller trees that were close to the fallen tree are bent under its weight.

However, as we continued to survey the scene, we noticed some other things as well: it was a very dark part of the forest, but where the fallen tree had shaved branches off the other trees, the sunlight was breaking through into the clearing.

Also, as I looked closely at the bent saplings beside the fallen tree, I could see greenery – evidence of new growth. In spite of everything, there was new life here.

It reminded me of a quote by Anne Lamott that I have posted on here previously:

It also makes me think about a conversation that I had with a woman I met recently, who has experienced huge loss in her life.

In the 1990’s her brother was murdered in the troubles – a case of mistaken identity. Two and a half weeks later their mother died of a broken heart.

The doctor told them that there was nothing medically wrong with their mother’s heart, she had literally died of a broken heart – as a grieving parent I can understand that.

This woman has had five other family bereavements, as well as those of her brother and mother.

She told me that overall, what she has been through has made her stronger. Yes, she said, there have been many times when all she could do was cry her eyes out and when she struggled just to get out of bed. However, through it all, she has learned  “not to sweat the small stuff” and to grasp the opportunities that life presents with both hands. She also told me that in her fifties she changed career completely and retrained to do something that she really enjoys. She now uses these skills, in a voluntary capacity, to be a blessing to others who are in a difficult situation.

This reminds me of the Bible verse in
Isaiah 45:3 (NKJV)

“I will give you the treasures of darkness
And hidden riches of secret places,
That you may know that I, the Lord,
Who call you by your name,
Am the God of Israel.”

Sometimes the lessons that we learn in the sad and painful times in our lives become the “treasures of darkness“.

We slowly come to realise, that in those dark and painful times, we have acquired a wisdom that we maybe, just maybe, could not have learned in any other way.