This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.

In August of 2021 my father passed away from alcoholism. I was 12 years old, and it was the day before the first day of seventh grade, my first in-person year of middle school. My parents were divorced and shared custody, so living alone with my mom wasn’t new.

What was new, however, was how my dad’s death sparked my Jewish identity. My dad was loosely Christian and my mom is Jewish, so I celebrated Christmas at my Dad’s house and Hanukkah at my mom’s. My mom and I never celebrated any other Jewish holidays and always considered ourselves “Jew-ish.”

My dad and I had a complicated relationship, making my experience with grief even more entangled. He was emotionally abusive, and I don’t have very many good memories with him. It felt like everyone around me expected me to miss my dad with every fiber of my being, but I didn’t. How was I supposed to miss the person whom I needed the most but only hurt me time and time again?

When you are young and grieving the loss of a parent, you feel so isolated from others; no one else your age has anything to compare your experience to. Plus, talking about death is generally uncomfortable for people, no matter how old you are. Add on a layer of abuse, you’re even more alone. 

Despite this, I was able to use my Jewish identity, as half-formed as it may have been at the time, to make new friends at school. Sometimes it came up with a new acquaintance. That allowed us to further our conversation and therefore our friendship. Other times it was a conversation starter, giving me the confidence to........

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