How do adults make sense of losing a parent as a baby or toddler: my research

I lost my dad when I was 2. My brother was 3, and my sister was only 3 months old. It was sudden, and the impact was far reaching, although, for a lot of my life I struggled to understand what that impact was, because I didn't remember him, and my mum had kind of "got on with it". What had I lost? Did I have the right to feel sad? Could I feel the loss of something I never had? As I got older, my understanding of the impact on me and my siblings changed and evolved and I realised that it was actually huge. I hadn't lost something I never had, I lost someone who I had a loving relationship with. It had shaped who I am. I wanted to meet other people who had lost a parent young, to understand their experiences and see if they were like my own. When I did my psychotherapy training I joyfully realised that this could be my research topic. I found people to interview on the Facebook group "Adults Bereaved as Children" run by Winston's Wish, which I recommend for any Adult Bereaved as a Child (ABC). The people had to have been between the ages of 0 and 3 when their mother or father died. The participants who volunteered were all women, only one of them had an experience where the death and lost parent were talked about. This is an outline of the themes that emerged:

Child meaning alone

Participants felt different from others leading to feelings of shame

Only one of the four participants was talked to about the death and loss of the parent, therefore there was a lot that they had to figure out themselves.

Confusion and Invalidity of my Loss

All participants had a sense of a void - a hole left but no memories to fill it with

They would tell themselves, or others would give them messages that they couldn't miss what they didn't know.

They would try to make sense of the loss through comparison with other types of loss and trauma, such as those where you have a before and after.

Filling the void with myth/wonderings

The parent they fantasied about losing was often idealised

They participants imagined and wondered about the life or person they had lost

They thought about how they would have been different if the person had lived

A lifelong process

The participants were hungry for memories of others - stories, pictures and any information

The processing and unpicking of the loss was an important part of adulthood

All the particpants were mothers- grief and awareness had been triggered and grew through become and being parents

All the participants experienced anxiety in different forms. They tended to attribute this to the loss of the parent only although they had also experienced loss of part of the remaining parent, or other difficult consequences.

This is a very brief outline of the research. If it speaks to you and you want to know more then do get in touch. I want to thank the participants for being so open and willing to share their stories.

Desmond Sweasey 1942-1979