Unfinished Conversation
On children dealing with loss and grief
Giulia was eight years old when she came to me.
Her mother brought her to me for what looked, on the surface, like behavioral problems. Anger outbursts several times a week. Thumb-sucking whenever she felt sad or disappointed. Separation anxiety. Fear of the dark. She couldn’t sleep without her mother.
None of it was a mystery once you understand what she was carrying.
Her father had died three years earlier. Suddenly and unexpectedly.
The first session was slow. Giulia answered quietly, sometimes not at all. She took a long time with everything. These are clear signs that a child’s experiences have left a deep mark and impact how they move through the world.
We worked carefully through some of the things we found inside.
In the second session we went looking for her dad.
Eyes closed, I took her hand and we flew to wherever she believed her father was. She said heaven. Children almost always say heaven. The concept is so deeply engraved it arrives without prompting.
We went through gates and found him there.
Grief is rarely just sadness. It is also anger. And often, underneath the anger, an unfinished conversation.
The parent is gone. But in a child’s inner world, the conversation can still happen. Not with a memory. With a presence the child constructs themselves, eyes closed, from everything they knew and loved about that person.
First, we let the child get rid of anything negative still there. Anger, disappointment, hate sometimes.
When I notice the child is dealing with a heavy negative load, I have the deceased parent say something along these lines:
Here where I am those emotions don’t matter. Things are calm and peaceful here. Give them all to me. Let me take over. Give me anything that is weighing you down.
She gave him everything.
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