What do we mean by “disenfranchised grief.” It’s when your experience of grief is different than the general cultural attitudes about “justified” pain regarding death and loss or “acceptable” mourning practices. Being out of “the norm” in your grief experience often tend to exacerbate the pain as people can feel very alone.
In this conversation, Candace Opper talks about her experience losing a childhood acquaintance to suicide and how this event stayed with her for decades.
“Grief is love not wanting to let go.”
When children are grieving a death by suicide, they need the caring adults around them to help them find their way through Wordon’s tasks of mourning:
Task #1: Accept the Reality of the Loss
Task #2: Process the Pain of the Grief
Task #3: Adjust to a World without the Deceased
Task #4: Move on to an Enduring Connection While Embarking on a New Life
In this podcast, I interview Barbara Rubel, author of But I Didn’t Say Goodbye: Helping Families After a Suicide. We walk through specific strategies families and other caring adults can use to support kids bereaved by suicide across many developmental ages.
