Take our Depression Test

Find a therapist to heal from grief

Grief is a common human experience.

Losing a parent, at any age, can be a traumatic loss.

Children who lose a parent are at greater risk for negative mental health outcomes.

Grief surprises me. As someone who lost a parent early in life, I have long been the person people turn to when they’re struggling with loss. So, it’s not other people’s grief that surprises me. That makes sense. It’s mine.

Particularly in the past several years, when life has become so full and loss has been pervasive, my feelings of grief about my personal losses have quieted. The anniversary of my father’s death approaches and I need to be reminded to mark it. It is no longer something that I anticipate, but something I need to, awful as it may sound, schedule in to observe. Someone asked me how many years it's been, and both of us were quite stunned to realize 38 years have passed.

Perhaps the biggest difference at this stage of my life is that I am much less alone as a child grieving a parent. Certainly as a young child and then as a teen and young adult, I was different from others because I had lost a parent. At midlife, when the loss of parents becomes more common and expected, I am no........

© Psychology Today