I define grief quite simply as what one feels following a loss.

Grief can feel crushingly sad, or it can feel like numbness. It can come in waves, or it can wait a month and then mow you down. It can take forms that do not feel—or look—at all like sadness.

There is no right way and no wrong way to grieve or mourn. This is true for children as well as adults. Grief is personal. It is unique to each grieving person. It may be private, or it may be loud and public. When children run around and play following a loss, people will say that the children are not grieving—or that they are not grieving appropriately. This is simply untrue. Children grieve in their own ways.

For children, as well as for adults, every loss is unique, and every loss is experienced uniquely.

After years of studying bereavement, one of researcher George Bonanno’s most consistent findings is that “bereavement is not a one-dimensional experience. It’s not the same for everyone and there do not appear to be specific stages that everyone must go through.”[i]

Mourning, on the other hand, is often defined as our outward expression of loss. But here, I will focus on the complexities of its internal processes. Mourning takes time. It requires energy and focus. It involves a reworking of the relationship with the person who has died so that it transforms from an external, real-world relationship to an internal one. And in this process, parts of the lost loved one can become part of the mourner.

How do we know when mourning is moving forward? We know that mourning is successful when the bereaved person is able to move ahead in life and make room for new relationships.

Over the years, writers and clinicians have tried to tame the process of mourning by categorizing into stages and tasks. But in the end, mourning can take any number of shapes. There is no set of stages everyone must pass through. It is just like other painful, out-of-control experiences in our lives: it is messy, and there is no definitive road map.

One thing we do know for sure is that for mourning to occur, the first thing that must happen is that the bereaved person must acknowledge that a loss has occurred.

This may seem obvious. But when you lose someone you really love, it is sometimes hard to accept that they are really gone. You want to believe that it is all a big mistake. You want to think that they will come back eventually. You may find yourself denying that they are really gone.

This is especially true for children, and it is particularly true for the youngest children. Before the age of five, most children do not understand what death is. They do not understand that it is permanent. They do not realize........

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