Be Gentle With Yourself

Whatever you’re feeling right now is what you should be feeling right now. If you’re sad and depressed, fine. If you’re often angry, good. If you can’t feel anything, well, that’s okay too. If you’re stressed, worried, and feeling all the feels, so be it. There’s no wrong way to feel about losing your child. You can’t f--- it up any worse than it already is.

As if that isn’t hard enough, you’re probably beating up yourself. Don’t worry, we all do it. It’s the most natural response to the most unnatural disaster a parent can possibly experience.

Guilt, shame, regret—pick your poison. You torture yourself thinking about something you could have done to prevent the whole mess. Slap! You’re tormented about all the wrong things you’ve said and all the right things you should’ve said. Smack! Your relentless guilt tells you that you deserve the pain because you’ve failed miserably at the most fundamental aspect of being a parent: protecting your child. Pow! You beat the living daylights out of yourself because you’re still living and your child will never see daylight again. Oomph! It’s all perfectly normal, although those two words couldn’t feel any further from what you’re currently going through.

In the meantime, I’m going to tell you something that is way easier said than done, that sounds so obvious and simplistic that when you hear it, you’ll nod in agreement, although you won’t be able to do it until you’re ready to do it. Here it is: Be gentle with yourself.

I first heard those words at the end of the first grief group I ever attended. I had been beating myself up with all kinds of excruciating questions: How can I reconcile eating soup dumplings with Rob in the afternoon and him taking his own life the next night? How do you love someone with all of your heart even though he keeps breaking it over and over again? How do you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved? I finally let myself off the hook when I asked one last question: How can I be so furious about what he did when I know that it wasn’t him but his mental illness that made him do it?

Mental illness was the only thing that made sense of Rob’s death. Rob was sick, and when the sick part took over his life, he finally decided to do something about it and checked out. When I came to that realization, I stopped punishing myself and never looked back.

So now the question is: What’s it going to take for you?

You: I don’t know. All I do is cry. I can’t stop.

Me: Crying is good for you. It may not feel good—actually, I know from experience that it feels like sheer pain—but it will feel good down the road.

You: I don’t know if anything will ever feel good again. How can it? I feel so broken. There’s a piece of me that is missing; it’s gone and can never be replaced. How can I be gentle with myself when I don’t feel like myself?

Me: Good question. Let me reassure you: You are yourself. You don’t feel like yourself because you’re at the end right now—the end of who you were. Soon you’ll be going through the middle—that’s where a transformation takes place—and eventually, in your own time and in your own way, you’ll arrive at the beginning of who you have become: an extraordinary parent. The pain of losing a child never really goes away, but it does lessen as you learn to integrate it into your life.

You: I want to believe you, I really do, but I’m hurting right now like I’ve never hurt before. I feel the pain of missing my kid. And then I feel like it’s all my fault. Like, how could I have allowed this to happen? This isn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. What did I do to deserve this?

Me: You don’t deserve this and it’s not your fault.

You: Thank you for saying that, but I’ll never forgive myself, which makes me so mad. I walk around feeling mad all the time. I’m mad at my child. I’m mad at the world. I’m mad at God. I feel like I’m going mad.

Me: Well, this is where “be gentle with yourself” comes in handy. The pain, as I vividly remember it, is so intense and unrelenting and yet, at the same time, necessary. It’s necessary in helping you process the loss while keeping you connected to your child. What’s not necessary are the self-inflicted wounds. The ones we torture ourselves with, the ones that keep us up all night, the ones that cut the deepest.

You: I know you’re giving me helpful advice and I appreciate it, truly, but sometimes I just can’t get out of my own way. The questions—the whys, the what-ifs—fly in from nowhere and it’s just so easy to tumble down that rabbit hole and punish myself. It’s hard to separate, much less distinguish, the pain and heartbreak of my child’s death from the pain and guilt I’m inflicting on myself.

Grief Essential Reads

Why We Write Poems After Heartbreak

Letting Go and Letting Go and Letting Go After Loss

Me: Let’s try a little experiment: Close your eyes and think about your best friend. Can you picture them? Good! Now think about a time when they might have been going through a particularly rough patch in their life. Maybe it was a health scare or a marriage crisis or a serious problem at work—something that was troubling at their core. Or maybe, God forbid a million times, imagine they’re going through what you’re going through right now.

You: God forbid a million times.

Me: And your best friend calls you one day because they’re at the end of their rope and need to confide in someone who will understand what they’re feeling. They need to feel connected to someone who gets them, someone who can tell them they’re not crazy, someone who has always given them sound advice. That someone is you.

Your friend starts out sobbing, revealing their darkest thoughts about the death of their child, and just as you said before, they’re feeling guilty and angry and scared and confused and mad at the world, and they also share something they have never shared with anyone else, something that makes them feel like a monster. Your friend tells you that they feel relieved because they’ve been waiting for that nightmarish phone call for a long time. They say that it feels like they finally stopped holding their breath, and, ironically, that deepens their guilt and suffering even more. Your friend goes on to confess that the only reason they’re still here is for the sake of their other children. And after all is said and done, they circle back to blaming themselves for their child’s death.

You: Oh my God! I wouldn’t wish that kind of heartbreak on anyone.

Me: Your best friend is in the worst pain imaginable. Only you, of course, can imagine it, because you’ve been there and want to help any way you can. You’re listening with all of your heart, and finally it’s your turn to speak. What do you say?

You: Wow! Whew! Gimme a second here. That was a lot. Um . . . the first thing I would tell them is that I love them.

Me: Good start.

You: Then I would say it again and again, and we’d both start to cry, just like I’m crying now. And I’d tell them that they’re not to blame and to stop beating themselves up about it because they’re the best parent I’ve ever known, and they did everything in their power to save their child. And I’d tell them that I’ve always admired their courage, their strength, and their perseverance. And I’d remind my friend that it wasn’t their fault because they did the best they could, and I’d tell them that they could ask all the whys and what-ifs from now until the end of time and it’s never going to bring their child back. Then maybe I’d suggest they stop torturing themselves because the pain of losing their child is unbearable enough. It doesn’t need any reinforcement, particularly when the thoughts in their head aren’t true, and I’d keep reminding them how much I love them and how much they need to love and—you bastard!—I’d tell them: Be gentle with yourself!

Me: Bravo! And . . . ?

You: And that I should probably extend the same loving kindness to myself! Ha! I see what you did there, dude!

Me: I’m glad you did! It’s such an important reminder. Your grief deserves your compassion. Your heart is broken, but there’s still room in there to love yourself.

You: I just miss my baby so much.

Me: You know they’re with you. They’ll always be with you.

You: You’re making me cry again.

Me: Well, just know that someday soon you’ll smile again.