Episode 7: Why Your Grief After Losing a Child Doesn't Need Explaining

 In this episode of Beyond the Loss: Life and Identity After a Child Dies, I explore something that often happens in the aftermath of profound loss—the way grief becomes labeled, interpreted, or explained through language that may not fully reflect the reality of what grieving parents are living.
 
Recently, I was reminded of how quickly we reach for familiar frameworks when trying to understand grief. Words like processing, healing, stages, or closure can offer structure, but they do not always capture the long and evolving relationship that exists after the death of a child.
 
Over time, I have come to understand that grief of this magnitude does not simply resolve.
 
It changes.
It deepens.
It becomes part of how we continue moving through the world.
 
In this conversation, I reflect on the difference between living in the immediacy of grief and speaking from a place where grief has had time to unfold and integrate into one’s life experience.
 
Together, we explore:
 
• Why grief after child loss is often misunderstood
• The subtle harm that can come from labeling grief too quickly
• The difference between immediate grief and integrated grief
• Why some human experiences resist explanation and categorization
• How awareness deepens when we allow grief to exist without rushing to define it
 
This is not a conversation about “moving on.”
 
It is an invitation to consider what becomes possible when we stop trying to immediately explain grief and instead create space for deeper understanding to emerge over time.
 
If you are grieving the loss of a child, supporting someone who is, or working professionally alongside bereaved families, I hope this episode offers space for reflection, compassion, and a gentler way of listening.
 
Take gentle care.
 
📌 Connect and Subscribe:
 
Website: https://sharonspano.com

Podcast:  Beyond the Loss - Sharon Spano 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SharonSpano-BeyondtheLoss-Host

Substack:  https://substack.com/@drsharon
 
If this episode speaks to you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing, sharing, or leaving a comment. These conversations matter deeply, and together we can continue creating more compassionate space for grief, healing, and life after child loss. 
 
🎙️ Interested in being a guest on the podcast? 
You’re welcome to reach out and share your interest: 
https://sharonspano.com/podcast-guest-beyond-the-loss/ 

Transcript: Here

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Beyond the Loss. This is a space for parents who have lost a child in any way at any age, where no grief is ranked, explained, or excluded. I'm Dr. Sharon Spano, developmental coach, systems thinker, and a parent whose life was forever changed by the death of my own son Michael. When a child dies, life doesn't return to what it was. Identity shifts, meaning fractures, and yet life continues to ask something of us. These conversations are for parents living this reality and for the professionals who support them. My intention is to offer a space where loss is not compared, judged, or explained away. Recently, someone commented that it sounds like I'm still processing my grief. And what stood out to me wasn't the comment itself, but the way that it was framed. There's a tendency, especially in professional spaces, to interpret grief through familiar language, words like processing, healing, stages. And while these words can be useful, they don't always capture the full reality of what it means to live after the loss of a child. From my own experience and from years of reflection and work in this space, and you heard me say this many times, grief doesn't resolve. It doesn't complete itself. It changes, it deepens, it becomes part of how you move through the world. There are moments, even years later, and I can attest to this after 18 years having passed since my son Michael died, where something surfaces in a way that is just as real, just as present as it was in those first early days, weeks, or months. But that doesn't mean that you're back at the beginning. And it doesn't mean you're trying to work something out. It means you're in relationship with something called grief that just simply doesn't end. So yes, I am still in relationship with my grief, although that relationship has changed throughout the years. That will always be true. But this podcast, and I want to be careful in how I say this, is not about my processing something in real time. It's grounded in lived experience and in years of reflection, study, and integration around what happens to identity, relationships, and systems after such a profound loss. And I also want to name something else that's beginning to happen. I've had a few other people who have listened to the podcast offer me condolences or say things like, hang in there. And I understand where that comes from, and I appreciate the need to express such kindness, and I'm grateful for it. It's a natural human response when we hear about the loss of a child. But I want to gently clarify something. This space is not about me in that way. I have done the work. My lived experience is part of what informs this work, this podcast, if you will. But it's not something I'm sharing here to be held, comforted, or responded to. It's being used in service of something much larger. I want to help us name patterns. I want to bring language to experiences that many parents are already living, but don't always have words for. So if you feel the instinct to offer comfort to me personally, I would simply invite you to pause and consider this. What might it be like to listen, not for how to respond, but for what is being revealed? Because again, this space is less about supporting me as an individual and more about understanding something that exists across many lives. And as I've repeatedly stated, there is a difference between being in the immediacy of grief and speaking from a place where that experience has had time to unfold. And again, that distinction matters greatly. My intention here then is not about seeking sympathy on my own behalf. I speak from the integration of time and in doing so hope to open the conversation and perhaps even offer hope to those parents in the earlier stages of their grief. With that premise in mind, I ask you to remember that this space, again, is not about my need to work something out publicly. It's about naming what many people are already living and yet don't have the language for. I cannot say that enough. What I'm noticing is how quickly we reach for language that explains or contains an experience that may not fit neatly into current professional or societal explanations. And that's an important thing to notice because it tells us how great and how intense and the impact of such a loss on the overall family system. And when that happens, when we find ourselves wanting to fit it into a neat little box, we can unintentionally reduce something that is far more complex. And I can tell you from experience, it is very hurtful to parents when that happens. From a systems perspective, which is where I live most of the time, I know that it makes sense because professionals are trained to assess, thank God for that, to categorize and to respond. And we need those professionals to help us make sense of those things, particularly in the early stages. But again, not everything can or should be categorized so quickly, particularly when we don't know the circumstances of what the person has experienced, especially something that fundamentally disrupts identity. Because again, the parents themselves often don't even realize that is a big part of their learning and growth experience and the experience of grief. So if you're listening as a professional, I would simply again invite you to notice where you might be interpreting this through what you already know and what might open up for you in your practice if you allow the experience to be what it is without needing to define it too quickly. So again, this podcast is grounded in my lived experience, plus my many years exploring the nuanced complexities of human life and the multiple disruptions that occur within those lives. I am not personally at the center of this body of work, but I do hope to offer up a space where we can explore together that which informs a deeper understanding of what it means to live after the loss of a child. And perhaps part of that work is allowing space for experiences that don't fit neatly into language. I've been talking a lot about language in these first few episodes because they do inform how we experience this particular path of grief. Not everything needs to be labeled, though we try very hard to do that. Not everything needs or can be resolved. Some things are meant to be lived and understood over time. So before we close, I want to offer you something simple as I try to do every week to carry with you. Again, we're not trying to change anything. We're just trying to notice and develop more awareness. So this week's patterns to practice is, as you might imagine, about noticing any need to label greed. Over the next few days, see if you can begin to notice your own relationship to language, whether you're a parrot or a professional. Not just what you say out loud, but what happens internally when you're about to say something or when you hear something. Notice when you feel the urge to explain your experience, when you reach for words that don't quite fit, when you feel the need to make something make sense or to close the awkwardness. And also notice when you feel the impulse to interpret someone else's experience, to define it, to respond to it, to make it more understandable. I'm not asking you to stop yourself, just notice it. And in those moments, you might ask yourself, what if I didn't need to name this right away? What if I could let this experience just exist? What if I could just be without defining it? Where in your life are you being asked to understand something beyond what you already know before it's ready to even perhaps be understood? Because sometimes the first step toward a deeper kind of understanding is not finding the right words, but allowing the experience to be exactly what it is. Again, as a final reminder, not everything needs to be named and not everything can or should be understood right away. Some experiences ask more of us. They ask us to stay present and let understanding unfold over time. I hope you'll join me for next week's episode where I'll be talking about how we as parents might begin to experience a life of meaning and purpose when there are no answers or even a roadmap on how to do so. Until next time, this is Dr. Sharon Spano reminding you to take gentle care. Thank you for spending this time with me. If this conversation stirred something for you, you don't need to make sense of it right away. There's no timeline for understanding and no right way to carry what remains. Beyond the loss exists to honor parents who've lost a son or daughter and all the complexity that this implies, and to support the professionals who walk alongside them without comparison, judgment, or explanation. Wherever you are in the long after, you are not required to arrive anywhere else. Until next time, take gentle care.