When Life Complicates Grief

Grief may be a process unlike any other, but its raw materials are the many experiences and characteristics of our lives.  Like most human beings—including most children—grief is complicated.

When children in troubled families experience significant losses, their grief often follows patterns that have been influenced by their other experiences. Some of these patterns have been mapped out in the psychological literature and given names like “ambiguous loss,” “traumatic loss,” “ambivalent grief,” and "disenfranchised grief."

• When a loss is significant but somehow incomplete, the loss can be confusing and very painful, even if no one has died. Examples might include a parent who is physically there but unable to attach in healthy ways or play a parent’s role, or a sibling who is in prison or simply disappears and is never heard from again.
• When death is connected to a traumatic event—for example, violence in the family, a car crash, a house fire, or suicide—survivors’ memories and responses often combine trauma and grief.
• When people the child loves and needs are also sources of fear, pain, anger, frustration, or deep resentment, their loss can bring a range of emotions—including relief—that can leave children feeling confused, guilty, lost, and unlovable.
• When children or adults are part of marginalized groups, or when their grief is affected by social stigma and shame (for example, toward an overdose or a substance use disorder in the family), they may experience "disenfranchised grief." Their grief may be overlooked or minimized, and they might receive subtle or obvious social signals that their grief is unworthy or even shameful.

The following resources offer a quick introduction to some of these concepts.