'Parent Loss' Tagged Posts

My Parent Died – What Do I Do Now?

A few questions and answers

by Dr. Evelyn Pechter

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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Who Are We After Our Parents Die?

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…

Finding Meaning After The Loss Of A Parent

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…

Hope For Suicide Survivors

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…

Three Ways We Change After The Death Of A Parent

February 16, 2015
Sue Rowen, M.A., MFT
Grief, Healing

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.

10 Steps To Grieving The Death Of A Parent

February 16, 2015
Jo Christner, Psy.D.
Grief, Healing

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…

My Parent Has Died! What Now?

August 14, 2014
Sue Rowen, M.A., MFT
Grief

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!”

When a parent dies, we find ourselves