Category: Children and Death

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More obituaries acknowledge suicide as openness on mental health grows

Deborah Blum holds a photo of her child, Esther Iris, who died by suicide in 2021. When it came time to write the death notice, Blum was open and specific about the mental health struggles that led to her child’s death.

By Debby Waldman

When Deborah and Warren Blum’s 16-year-old died by suicide in November 2021, they went into shock. For two days, the grief-stricken Los Angeles couple didn’t sleep.

But when it came time to write a death notice, Deborah Blum was clearheaded: In a heartfelt tribute to her smart, funny, popular child, who had recently come out as nonbinary, she was open and specific about the mental health struggles that led to Esther Iris’s death.

“Esther’s whole thing was that people should know and talk about mental health and it shouldn’t be a secret,” Deborah Blum told KFF Health News. “The least I could do was to be honest and tell people. I think being embarrassed just makes it worse.”

Deborah Blum in the bedroom of her teen child, Esther Iris.

While it was once unheard-of to mention suicide as a cause of death in news obituaries and paid death notices, that has been changing, especially in the past 10 years, said Dan Reidenberg, a psychologist and managing director of the National Council for Suicide Prevention.

High-profile suicides — such as those of comic actor Robin Williams in 2014, fashion designer Kate Spade in 2018 and dancer Stephen “tWitch” Boss in 2022 — have helped reduce the stigma surrounding suicide loss. So has advertising for depression and anxiety medications, which has helped normalize that mental illnesses are health conditions.

The covid-19 pandemic also drew attention to the prevalence of mental health challenges.

“The stigma is changing,” Reidenberg said. “There is still some, but it’s less than it used to be, and that’s increasing people’s willingness to include it in an obituary.”

The teen’s drawings.
A card Esther Iris made for their dad, Warren Blum.

While there’s no right or wrong way to write death announcements, mental health and grief experts said the reluctance to acknowledge suicide has implications beyond the confines of a public notice. The stigma attached to the word affects everything from how people grieve to how people help prevent others from ending their own lives.

Research shows that talking about suicide can help reduce suicidal thoughts, but studies have also found that spikes in suicide rates can follow news reports about someone dying that way — a phenomenon known as “suicide contagion.” The latter is an argument people make for not acknowledging suicide in obituaries and death notices.

Reidenberg said, however, the subject can be addressed responsibly.

That includes telling a balanced story, similar to what Deborah Blum did, acknowledging Esther Iris’s accomplishments as well as their struggles. It means leaving out details about the method or location of the death, and not glorifying the deceased in a way that might encourage vulnerable readers to think dying by suicide is a good way to get attention.

A surfboard in memory of Esther Iris, with notes from their community written on it, is outside the Blum home in Los Angeles.

“We don’t ever want to normalize suicide, but we don’t want to normalize that people can’t have a conversation about suicide,” Reidenberg said.

Having that conversation is an important part of the grieving process, said Holly Prigerson, a professor of sociology in medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and an expert on prolonged grief disorder.

“Part of adjusting to the loss of someone is coming up with a story of what happened and why,” she said. “To the extent that you can’t be honest and acknowledge what happened if it’s a death due to suicide, that will complicate, if not impede, your ability to fully and accurately process your loss.”

People close to the deceased often know when a death was by suicide, Reidenberg said, particularly in the case of young people.

“Being honest can lead to information and awareness, whereas if we keep it shrouded in this big mystery it doesn’t help,” he added.

A study about caregiver depression that Prigerson recently conducted identified avoidance as an impediment to healing from grief.

“Not acknowledging how someone died, denying the cause of death, avoiding the reality of what happened is a significant barrier to being able to adjust to what happened and to move forward,” she said.

Researchers are increasingly seeing bereavement as a social process, Prigerson said, and as social beings, people look to others for comfort and solace. That’s another reason the stigma attached to suicide is harmful: It keeps people from opening up.

“The stigma is based on the perception that others will judge you as being an inadequate parent, or not having done enough,” Prigerson said. “This whole thing with obituaries is all about others — it’s about how people are going to read what happened and think less of you.”

Stigma, shame and embarrassment are among the reasons grieving family members have traditionally avoided acknowledging suicide in obituaries and death notices. It’s also why, if they do, they may be more likely to address it indirectly, either by describing the death as “sudden and unexpected” or by soliciting donations for mental health programs.

Economics can factor in — sometimes people are secretive because of life insurance plans that exclude payouts for suicides. Sometimes they’re trying to protect reputations, theirs as well as those of the deceased, particularly in religious communities where suicide is considered a sin.

Avoiding the word suicide doesn’t necessarily mean someone is in denial. In the days after a loss, which is when most obituaries and death announcements are written, it’s often profoundly difficult to face the truth, especially in the case of suicide, said Doreen Marshall, a psychologist and former vice president at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Even when people can admit the truth to themselves, they might have trouble expressing it to others, said Joanne Harpel, a suicide bereavement expert in New York who works with mourners through her business, Coping After Suicide.

In the support groups she runs, she said, people vary in how open they are willing to be. For example, in the group for mothers who have lost a child to suicide, everyone acknowledges that reality — after all, that’s why they’re there — but they don’t all do so the same way.

“Some of them will refer to ‘when this happened’ or ‘before all this,’” Harpel said, cautioning against holding all mourners to the same standard. “They’re not pretending it was something else, but using the word ‘suicide’ is so confronting and so painful that even in the safest context it’s very, very hard for them to say it out loud.”

If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.<

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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A Moment in Time

— “Explaining Death to a Toddler”

Walking by a tree the other day, I noticed one brown leaf among the flourishing green. I wondered, “Why is it that this specific one died?”

By Rabbi Zach Shapiro

Dear all,

Walking by a tree the other day, I noticed one brown leaf among the flourishing green. I wondered, “Why is it that this specific one died?”

The question weighed heavily, as Ron and I are preparing to explain the death of a loved one to our toddler children.  We know there will be many questions:

”Why?”

”Why now?”

”What does death mean?”

”Will something happen to you?”

”If so, who will take care of me?”

While the conversation will be difficult, we also know it needs to be straight-forward. When talking about death, it’s really important to keep the following in mind:

  1. Don’t use euphemisms. (No one “passed away” or “went to sleep.” The person died.”)
  2. It’s ok to express your own emotions and not hide them.
  3. Make sure you answer the question the child is actually asking. Be brief and simple about it.
  4. It’s ok to share: “a body stopped working” and: “it doesn’t move or eat or play anymore.” If the child asks if the body is like a toy that needs a new battery, explain that living things can’t get new batteries like toys do.
  5. Your child may or may not ask questions. Some questions may unfold over time.

Also – remember this. Every death is different. Sharing the death of an older adult is very different experience than sharing the death of a young person. And different children will respond in different ways.

Mind you, it’s one thing to offer this advice in my moment in time. It’s another to sit and have the conversation with our children. We will rehearse it. We will prepare our answers. But we will also ensure that we are not so over-prepared that we come off as staged.

It’s a delicate balance. But so is life.

With love and shalom.

Rabbi Zach Shapiro

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why young people with life-limiting illnesses need special end-of-life care

Sydney’s Adolescent and Young Adult Hospice is the first of its kind in Australia, and opened its doors in February this year.

By Shalailah Medhora

Young people with serious illnesses will soon be able to have consistent end-of-life care under the new Paediatric Palliative Care Action Plan, launched by the federal government today.

It is the first road map for end-of-life care specifically targeted at infants, children, adolescents and young adults.

Currently, palliative care services are aimed at people in their 70s, 80s and older, which means that young people aren’t getting the services they need.

Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney told Hack that the plan aims to bridge that gap.

“There always seems to have been a gap with the need for a specialist palliative care program for young people, because I think their needs are quite different.”

The plan was commissioned under the previous federal government and has been four years in the making.

“We brought together governments, key stakeholder organisations, health services, health workers, families … to build this action plan,” Ms Kearney said.

“It’s going to be out there as of today to make sure … we have national consistency, and that young people, children and infants get the best possible care they can.”

The need for youth-specific care

Earlier this year, the Adolescent and Young Adult Hospice (AYAH) opened its doors in the northern beaches of Sydney. It was the first of its kind in Australia, a facility aimed solely at providing care for young people aged 15 to 24.

“It’s a time when they’re going through emotional changes, social changes, physical changes, etc,” services manager Tayia Yeats said.

“They need to have that different area, which is purpose built for them, where they can interact with others that are going through similar challenges.”

The facility is funded through New South Wales Health, charity the North Foundation, and through donations from the community.

It has purpose-built spaces for activities young people enjoy, like a music room, games room and space to watch movies.

“It feels more like a hangout,” university student Patrick Nolan said.

Patrick is 21 and lives with muscular dystrophy. He has visited AYAH for respite care and says the most important aspect of the facility is the ability to interact with other young people.

“We’d stay up late, just messing around like any young person can do. And for me that that’s a bit of a challenge outside of this place,” Patrick explained.

Three young people who use wheelchairs pose for the camera, alongside three carers
Patrick Nolan (holding guitar) says respite care is like a “holiday from life”, and gives him the opportunity to behave like a carefree young person.

“What they want to be doing at 21 years of age is very different than what you want to be doing at 81 years of age,” nurse practitioner Sara Fleming said.

She’s been working in paediatric palliative care for over 20 years, and said the needs of a young person approaching the end of their lives can be very different to what health care professionals — and even the young person’s family — recommend.

Sara said she had a young patient once who had a life expectancy of just a few months.

“There was great distress in the family and distress experienced by the parents, because this young person, they wanted to go to a party.”

“So my job as a nurse looking after this was to go, ‘Alright, let’s get you to the party. But let’s put some things in place that are invisible to people at the party that just help everyone,'” Sara said.

Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney said a key aspect of the paediatric palliative care plan is ensuring that the views of young people are respected.

“It’s so important to involve young people in the decision making around the end of their life. It’s their life.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to talk to your children about death and dying

— Death will touch our children. They will have questions, some of which are unanswerable.

By the time children enter elementary school, they begin to understand that everyone — including their families and themselves — will die.

BY Hayley Juhl

It can be unnerving when your child works death into their imaginary play. It’s the thing we most want to shield them from, and their game feels dark and frightening.

Playing pretend is how children build order in their expanding worlds and gain control over situations that are far bigger than them. It is no different than adults turning a series of possibilities around in their minds — it’s just that youth offers the freedom to play each of the parts out loud. It is natural and good.Does it hurt to die? Where does the person go? Why did it happen to them? Are you going to die? I am going to die?

Every one of those questions must be addressed, even if you have to say, “I don’t know, but we can talk about it together.” Use clear, age-appropriate language and avoid phrases like “gone away” and “departed,” as younger children don’t understand forever and might struggle with reality that the person isn’t coming back. “They have left us” is wrapped in an extra layer of abandonment; “gone to sleep” will terrify them come bedtime.

Children under 2 do not comprehend death, though they have strong feelings of attachment and insecurity, according to Child Bereavement UK, which breaks down children’s understanding by age. Once they are teenagers, they are more likely to deal with death and grief by withdrawing and seeking the support of their peers.

Preschoolers might not react the way we expect them to when they are told someone has died, and might frequently ask when the person is coming back. This is the time they are most likely to talk and play about death and show interest in how it works. Keep answers short and clear and don’t offer more information than they ask for, as it can confuse them and heighten their anxiety.

By the time they are in elementary school, they begin to understand that everyone — including their families and themselves — will die.

“Children’s imagination and ‘magical thinking’ can mean that some children may believe that their thoughts or actions caused the death, and they can feel guilty,” Child Bereavement UK says. If their questions aren’t answered, they might fill in the gaps on their own. They must be made to feel comfortable asking questions, and we should take this opportunity to reassure them they could not have done anything to prevent the death.

Children who experienced the death of a loved one at a young age might need to reprocess their feelings as their understanding grows, Child Bereavement UK says. Conversations about death are not a one-and-done.

Don’t wait until the last moment. The Montreal Children’s Hospital advises thinking and talking about death before it touches our children’s lives.

“Many parents wait until a death occurs to work with their children on dealing with the idea of death,” the Children’s says, “But that can be especially difficult if the parents are dealing with grief themselves.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How many dead moms will it take to stop America’s maternal mortality epidemic?

Midwife Angie Miller listens to the heart beat of a patient’s baby in their home on June 29, 2021.

By

When sheriff’s deputies in Florida went to perform a welfare check last month on Tori Bowie, the Olympic runner, they made the saddest possible discovery. Bowie and her newborn daughter were dead. Though the full story of Bowie’s last days has yet to emerge, some details are clear: She had died in labor, suffering from eclampsia and respiratory distress.

These tragic events are an enraging reminder that the United States’ maternal mortality rate is the worst in the industrialized world. Black women are up to three times more likely to die during or after pregnancy than White women. Almost two-thirds of all these deaths could be prevented.

Expectant moms deserve more from their lawmakers, providers, public health groups and hospitals: more visits before and after pregnancy, better access to the simple drugs and devices that could keep them alive, and expanded insurance coverage.

Since the federal government began keeping records in 1987, America’s maternal mortality rate has only gotten worse. Between 2000 and 2020, the United States was one of eight countries where the situation deteriorated fastest, a list that included Venezuela and Mauritius. There’s no one cause of this long slide: A strained health-care system, a stingy insurance system, a lack of paid leave, the retreat of reproductive rights and endemic racism all contribute.

Covid-19 made a bad situation worse. Pregnant women who contracted the virus were seven times more likely to die than those who avoided infection. But even as vaccination became widespread, pregnant women kept dying from all the more common causes: infections, hemorrhages, hypertensive disorders such as preeclampsia and embolisms. In 2022, 733 American women died while pregnant or shortly after childbirth. That’s a maternal death rate of 20 per 100,000 births — up from 17.6 in 2019, already two or three times the rate of many high-income nations.

For Black women, pregnancy and childbirth bring the toll of racism in the United States into sharp focus. A large body of research shows that being Black in America wears on women’s bodies, leaving them uniquely vulnerable during pregnancy. Black women are 60 percent more likely than White women to experience preeclampsia, for instance. Add to which they experience inequalities in access, quality of care, prescribing, data collection and more. These differences persist even among wealthy, educated women. So stark is the disparity it has come under United Nations scrutiny.

There’s much providers can do to help: A 2019 analysis of preventable maternal deaths by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives a clear list. Open earlier or stay open later to serve patients who work nights. Accept Medicaid. Educate patients early and often about conditions to watch out for. Take patients with headaches or shortness of breath seriously.

And there’s a lot policymakers must do to keep pregnant women safe and healthy. Fortunately, even in this divided, fractious Congress, there’s bipartisan support. Bills introduced by Reps. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), Robin L. Kelly (D-Ill.) and Robert E. Latta (R-Ohio) and Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maggie Hassan Wood (D-N.H.) would pull together working groups to identify the best ways forward. One target of Kelly and Latta’s: Finding ways to identify and improve hospitals and doctors who are failing women and babies.

Lawmakers in both parties agree that childbirth and postpartum support from other practitioners matters, too. Evidence is accumulating that access to doula care during labor can lower Caesarean section rates. Doulas offer mothers nonmedical support and advocacy before, during and after delivery. Programs run both by community groups and insurance giants are exploring whether doulas can have a measurable impact on maternal mortality, especially for Black women.

Congress funded some home health visiting programs in the 2022 government appropriations bill. The United States should join other wealthy countries in making sure new mothers get regular visits after they come home from the hospital, when they are still at risk.

It would also help to standardize how Medicaid covers the medicines and devices for pregnant people. An analysis by KFF found glaring gaps. Four state Medicaid programs still don’t cover low-dose aspirin, which can prevent preeclampsia. Ten don’t cover blood pressure monitors for use at home between doctor’s visits. And six states don’t cover glucose monitors, crucial for managing gestational diabetes.

Meanwhile, the federal government could kick-start pilot programs that explore new ways to lower maternal mortality. Examples include payment schemes that compensate providers who do a better job for mothers and babies or demonstration projects that bundle housing and prenatal care in the same setting.

We don’t know whether Tori Bowie and her baby could have been saved with earlier intervention. We do know how to save hundreds of other American mothers.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why Americans Are Dying So Young

A memorial of white crosses is erected to the children killed at school in Uvalde, Texas at the starting point of the March for Our Lives protest on June 11, 2022 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the country in various cities, thousands are gathering to demand for meaningful gun laws following the recent shootings from Uvalde, Texas, to Buffalo, New York. The March For Our Lives movement was spurred by the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

By Laudan Aron and Gavin Yamey

Life expectancy in America fell sharply in 2020. It fell again in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly played a role, but that’s not the whole story. During this same time period, eight of the ten leading causes of death also increased. Even maternal and child and adolescent mortality increased. In August 2022, federal health officials released new data showing that across all demographic groups, Americans are dying younger.

Ten years ago, a landmark report called “Shorter Lives, Poorer Health” documented for the first time a widespread “U.S. health disadvantage,” a shortfall in the health and survival of Americans relative to other high-income countries [Aron was the report’s study director]. On some measures, such as violent deaths among males aged 15-24, the divergence from other rich countries began growing as early as the 1950s. The report showed that the U.S. had the lowest life expectancy among peer countries and higher rates of injury, illness, and death from dozens of causes. Evidence of this disadvantage was found for young and old, rich and poor, men and women, and Americans of all races and ethnicities.

Another seminal report released in 2021, called “High and Rising Mortality Rates Among Working-Age Adults,” showed that U.S. mortality rates have been increasing in mid-life (ages 25-64), the prime years for family formation, childrearing, caregiving, and employment. More surprisingly the rising mortality among U.S. children and youth between 2019 and 2021 represents a profound crisis. Although not predictive of future mortality conditions, which are likely to change, current survival rates mean that one in 25 American five-year olds will not reach their 40th birthday.

The reasons behind these disturbing trends are many, and one might argue, uniquely American. Here are five:

A poor start in life for many young Americans

Beyond the latest data on rising pediatric mortality rates, it is clear that the U.S. is failing its youngest citizens on multiple fronts. For at least a decade now, cross-national comparisons of child and adolescent wellbeing in rich countries show that the U.S. ranks at or near the bottom on most measures. Such measures include material wellbeing, health and safety, behaviors and risks, education, housing, family friendly policies, and social protection. Further, careful analyses of overall levels of social spending by country show that, compared to other high-income nations, the U.S. is distinct in how it spends, not how much it spends. American spending is much less redistributive, with fewer benefits going to children, families, and the disadvantaged. In addition to high rates of infant and maternal mortality, the latest data show that U.S. children are in the midst of a deepening mental health crisis, with increased access to firearms and opioids driving up rates of suicide, homicide, and overdoses. In 2020, firearm-related injuries surpassed motor vehicle crashes to become the leading cause of death among young Americans ages 1-19.

A dysfunctional and costly healthcare system

Among the many factors driving health and survival is healthcare. The U.S. has long been known for having one of the most complex, fragmented, and expensive healthcare systems in the world. For millions of Americans, quality, affordable, accessible healthcare is simply out of reach (and the uninsured are more likely to die young than the insured), or it is effectively unavailable, or disappearing due to political pressures, as in the case of sexual and reproductive healthcare. The U.S. healthcare system, its high costs, and its poor health outcomes, start to “make sense” when viewed through a business case lens, and its optimization of revenue and profits, rather than health and wellbeing. As Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, editor-in-chief of KFF Health News, says about the U.S. medical market, “a lifetime of treatment is preferable to a cure” and “prices will rise to whatever the market will bear.” It should come as no surprise then that that the U.S. healthcare system is one driver of the poor health and survival of Americans, many of whom are uninsured, underinsured, medically undertreated or overtreated, distrustful of the system, and drowning in medical debt. Finally, the astounding $4.3 trillion (or $12,914 per person) spent annually on healthcare in the U.S. far exceeds spending in other countries around the world, and crowds out other social investments that matter to human development, protection, and flourishing.

Societal systems that undermine wellbeing and accelerate inequality

Beyond healthcare, many other aspects of life and the policy-driven systems that underpin them are compromising the health and wellbeing of Americans. Lives are diminished and lost because of the U.S. approach to food and nutrition, housing and civic infrastructure, education and training, employment and entrepreneurship, crime and safety, economic and community development, credit and financial services, social protection and safety nets, and environmental conditions. Deep dives into most of these systems often reach two strikingly consistent conclusions: (1) they are perpetuating or accelerating inequality, and (2) they are working as designed, meaning their seemingly perverse effects are a feature, not a bug. These systems reflect both historical factors and ongoing choices by policymakers and private sector interests. The good news here is that other countries are making different choices, which (in theory) means the U.S. can too. We can rein in negative commercial determinants of health (private sector activities affecting health) and instead build genuine care systems and adopt a health-in-all-policies agenda, defined by the CDC as “a collaborative approach that integrates and articulates health considerations into policymaking across sectors to improve the health of all communities and people.”

An inadequate policy response to growing inequality and precarity

The large and growing U.S. disadvantage in health and survival is, in part, a reflection and accelerant of economic inequality and precarity. U.S. income and wealth inequality is high, has risen substantially over recent decades, and exceeds levels in other advanced democracies. Some might argue that high levels of inequality are acceptable as long opportunity and socioeconomic mobility remain high. But such opportunity and mobility have seen a dramatic reduction in the last half century, with only half of children today earning more than their parents did, compared to 90 percent of children born in 1940. Equally importantly, Americans greatly underestimate actual levels of wealth inequality and still prefer that wealth be more equitably distributed. The conditions producing such high levels of inequality — and ways of mitigating or reversing them — are of course matters of public policy. In addition to more progressive tax and transfer policies, which also affect many middle-class entitlements, any policy that expands access to the social determinants of health – nutrition, education, employment, housing, transportation, safety, justice, caregiving – will in turn improve population health and wellbeing. Policymakers influence their availability, accessibility, and affordability. One reason other high-income nations outperform the U.S. on health and survival is because the many resources that matter to health and wellbeing are distributed (or redistributed) more equitably and they have stronger systems of social care and protection.

Structural racism, racial capitalism, and their attendant injustices

Although the U.S. health disadvantage affects all Americans, even privileged ones, the most marginalized communities have always paid a much higher cost. The latest data on U.S. life expectancy by race/ethnicity confirm this and are a powerful reminder of the ongoing influence of systemic racism in the American landscape. As Dr. Camara Jones, past president of the American Public Health Association, explains, racism is “a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks (what we call ‘race’), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.” By unfairly structuring opportunity and allocating access to the resources that matter to health and survival, structural racism, racial capitalism (the interlinkages between capital accumulation and racial exploitation), and other forms of injustice directly influence population health. It is critical to acknowledge these root causes of the U.S. disadvantage in health and survival, rather than fall prey to overly simplistic narratives that blame individual people and places for their poor health. Ostensibly race-neutral policies and practices often perpetuate an enduring legacy of racism, protecting the health of some communities at the expense of others. One fascinating example is when the Florida Department of Agriculture banned sugar growers from burning sugar cane “when the wind blows east” in an effort to protect wealthier, whiter communities from their toxic fumes.

Declining life expectancy in the U.S., and especially rising deaths rates of children and adolescents, should be a loud wake-up call for the nation. The more hopeful but still urgent news is that we can change this reality: conditions of life and death are direct reflections of our values and priorities and the policies we choose to govern our communities and the nation as a whole. If we are to enjoy a level of health, wellbeing, and survival similar to those in other advanced democratic nations, Americans will need to make a fundamentally different set of policy choices.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How do I navigate grief in my twenties?

By Julia Presenza

Growing around your grief.

In your twenties, you’ll find some of your closest friends nursing hangovers from overindulging in vodka Red Bulls, overanalysing text messages and hoping no one saw them doing the walk of shame. On the other end, others are getting married to the loves of their lives, buying houses and having babies. We’ve all had these conversations before – everyone around you seems to be in different stages of life and needless to say, everyone is doing their best.

Still, there’s no how-to guide on ensuring you’re doing it all correctly. It goes without saying there’s no handbook outlining what to do when something major comes around and blows up your life as you know it, especially when it’s a life event you weren’t even considering could happen this early on.

Deep down in the back of our minds, we know eventually, one day in the far future, we will all have to deal with the loss of someone close in our lives. Call me naive, but dealing with grief wasn’t something I thought I’d have to add to the list of worries in my twenties. It seems almost unfair to be entering a point in life where I’m still trying to perfect the schedule of which night I should wash my hair and fake tan, to be then hit with the Earth-shattering experience of dealing with death.

Over recent years, I’ve had personal experiences navigating grief, from losing my dad to losing close friends of family members. As many self-help books will mention, the grieving process will be different for everyone. It’s one thing to try and navigate your own grief, and another trying to be the support person for someone else.

I experienced constant guilt of feeling someone else’s pain but never knowing what it actually felt like for them. I have three sisters, along with my mum, and while we all were experiencing my dad’s loss together, it was very apparent we had different ways of dealing with grief. With many questions circling in my head, I spoke to Carly Dober, psychologist and Headspace App’s Mental Health Expert, to get clarity.

How to navigate losing someone close to you while also being the support person for someone else

Carly acknowledges this can be incredibly difficult to navigate but states it’s important to honour and give your feelings of grief and loss enough time and attention. Often, people will jump into caretaker mode as a distraction from their pain but this can prolong the process of grieving for ourselves. Grieving is a shared effort. She mentions we can often find solace in others who are in pain, too. It’s important to be there to support your loved ones through this difficult time but also lean on your friends and networks so you’re also cared for and fully supported.

How to be supportive when multiple people are grieving the same person differently

Carly says this is very common, “We each have unique relationships with people, so how we will experience their loss is also unique. I’d recommend showing your support but also not lying”. Saying things like, ‘I know you had a very close relationship with them and I’m so sad that this is happening to you’, ‘How can I best help you through this?’ and ‘What do you need from me right now?’ are ways of showing your love for the person grieving while also honouring your relationship with the deceased.

How do you cope with the loss of different people within a short time?

Unfortunately, life isn’t fair. Carly recommends seeking support from a mental health professional early. Losing people is difficult enough, and the chronic stress of losing multiple people in a short time frame can be very destabilising. It’s encouraged to avoid any tempting but ultimately unhelpful coping strategies (such as self-medicating with drugs and alcohol) with helpful ones (such as routines, movement and rest).

Lean on close relationships, be social in whatever capacity you can and engage with pets and nature. Carly suggests clearly expressing your needs to others is also helpful in coping with the loss of multiple people.

What should you do about feeling guilty about moving on and not wanting to be sad anymore?’

Carly points out grieving can make us feel like life will never be the same again. Accepting that life goes on despite the difficulties can be the most challenging truth. Carly’s words were reassuring as she clarified that moving on from losing a loved one doesn’t mean we loved them or are hurting any less. It simply means we’re adapting to life without them and growing around our grief. Grief is a natural part of life; many of us experience it from a young age, while others learn this lesson later in life.

Just like the journey of navigating your twenties, there’s no correct or incorrect way to grieve. It’s crucial to express your emotions with those close to you and give yourself time and understanding to ease you through the difficult moments in life. It’ll make the grieving process a little less painful.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!