Mother's and Father's Day

Something to Think About as Mother's Day and Father's Day Approaches

Parental love involves a never-ending commitment and plenty of opportunities to care for and assume responsibility for your child. Parental grief challenges you to find a way to live with the frustration of being robbed of the opportunity to directly care and be responsible for your child.

Parental love involves having plenty of opportunities for emotional and physical contact with your child. Parental grief challenges you to find a way to continue loving your child without continued contact.

Parental love involves having dreams and expectations for the future of your child. Parental grief challenges you to find solace and meaning in a life briefly lived.

Parental love involves knowing where your child is. Parental grief challenges you to find a safe place for your child.

Parental love involves attending to your child's needs when he is in your presence. Parental grief challenges you to learn not to look after your own needs when you sense your child's presence or struggle with her absence.

Parental love involves an expanded capacity for love and life. parental grief challenges you to find the use for the expanded capacity, to not let it go to waste or whither away.

Because parental love is never ending, so too is parental grief. You don't really get over the death of your child, you just learn to live with it.

And so, on this special day when you celebrate your role as a mother or father, be kind to yourself. Give yourself a hug. Give yourself some time alone. Give yourself permission to remember, to cry, to miss your child, to tell others how you feel. But, most important of all, remember to celebrate the special gift of parental love, the lasting gift that your child has given you, a gift that not even death can take away.

-Karen Martin