If you're navigating grief and trying to parent grieving children, parts of Clarissa's story might sound familiar.
Today, Clarissa is one of the real people featured in the GriefShare video series. Throughout the sessions, she shares the struggles of grieving as both a widow and a mother.
But before Clarissa appeared in the GriefShare videos and curriculum, she was simply trying to survive the early days of devastating loneliness and grief.
Her story starts in the mountains on a quiet afternoon.
Clarissa sat at the campsite waiting for her husband, Rob, to text that he had reached the trailhead. It was something he always did.
At first, she wasn’t worried. Rob had gone hiking early that morning in Mount Rainier National Park. This wasn’t unusual. He loved the outdoors, and they had a simple routine whenever he hiked in the backcountry.
That text from Rob had become part of their routine. As the hours passed, though, her thoughts began to drift.
Maybe the hike took longer than expected.
Maybe his phone battery died.
Maybe he just lost signal in the mountains.
Still, no text.
Then a white SUV slowly made its way down the gravel road toward her campsite. Two chaplains stepped out.
Before they even spoke, Clarissa says she knew something was terribly wrong.
“I told them I couldn’t hear what they had to say until I had someone to hold my hand.”
When her friend arrived to hold her hands, the chaplains said the words that changed everything.
“They told me, ‘Your husband fell to his death.’”
In a single sentence, Clarissa’s life was divided into before and after.
Clarissa and Rob had built a beautiful life together.
They met at the singles table at a wedding and quickly fell in love. Over the next seventeen years, they raised four children, moved across the country, and built a life full of family adventures.
“We had a really beautiful life together… we were best friends.”
Both were writers, and they homeschooled their children so they could travel as a family. Much of their life was spent outdoors, camping, hiking, and exploring new places together.
It was a life that felt full and steady.
Until the day it wasn’t.
In the days that followed, Clarissa says the loss felt impossible to believe.
“Surely at some point somebody’s going to push stop and say none of this is happening.”
Traumatic loss often brings shock, a protective response that allows the mind to absorb grief slowly.
Even after returning home to Boston, Clarissa would sit at the dinner table and look toward the front door, expecting Rob to walk in after work.
“I thought it was just about time for him to walk in.”
Eventually, that expectation faded, and when the shock lifted, the full weight of grief arrived.
For people who lose a spouse, grief often shows up as loneliness in the smallest daily moments.
Clarissa describes widowhood this way:
“Loneliness…it’s the cold side of the bed at night.”
It appears in unexpected places:
“There’s never a moment that I don’t notice the aloneness I experience now.”
Yet even in that loneliness, Clarissa discovered something surprising. The pain exists because love still exists.
“I feel alone because I love him… and I don’t want the love to go away.
Clarissa also faced another overwhelming challenge: helping her four children grieve the loss of their father.
“Parenting a child after losing their parent is very difficult.”
She quickly recognized that each child experiences grief differently. Instead of trying to regulate their emotions, she focused on giving them space to express their grief in their own way.
Sometimes that meant creating small rituals, like placing a box in the dining room where the children could leave notes or memories for their dad.
Other times it meant simply staying present.
“My job is less about telling them how to do it and more about creating an environment where they can explore their own grief.”
Caring for a grieving child can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re grieving too. If you’re walking this road, discover simple, practical ways to parent grieving kids and to help them process their pain and confusion.
At first, Clarissa responded to grief by staying busy. She organized a fundraiser in Rob’s memory. She collected stories about him for her children. She filled her days with activity.
But eventually, a counselor asked her a simple question: “Have you cried?”
Clarissa realized she had been working around her grief instead of allowing herself to feel it.
Now she lets grief surface when it needs to.
“I cry in the grocery store… I cry at my son’s baseball game when all the dads are lined up, and his dad is not there.”
Grief doesn’t look the same for everyone. Sometimes it looks like tears. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion. Sometimes it means resting when the memories feel too heavy.
Over time, Clarissa says her grief has changed.
It hasn’t disappeared, but it has become something she carries with her. “I’ve come to see it as a companion that will walk with me through my life.”
It’s not a companion she would have chosen. But grief has also given her a deeper awareness of life’s fragility and beauty.
“People who live with grief learn to carry sorrow and joy in the same hands.”
If you are grieving today, you don’t have to carry that pain by yourself. GriefShare offers a place where people who understand grief can walk alongside one another, offering support, compassion, and hope.
Find a GriefShare group near you today.
Because healing often begins with one small step toward hope.