How to Grieve the Loss of a Parent

I turned on my computer; it started to load up. Suddenly I was met with an angry blue screen. My computer was fried. Thankfully, I was able to take it to a repair shop, and the guy was able to retrieve a few of my files. But I still lost my photos, my journal entries, and pieces of writing I hadn’t backed up. All that history and all those personal moments were now gone. Oddly enough, losing it felt like a part of my story was gone. 

It was disorienting. And rebuilding with a new computer was frustrating. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. My folders were empty. Shortcuts were gone. I’d open programs and instinctively reach for things that weren’t there anymore. It wasn’t just files I was missing—it was familiarity. 

But all of that was just data. And it’s just a machine. I don’t carry its DNA in my body. If losing your computer data is like a punch in the gut, what soul-devastating word would you use to describe the loss of a parent? 

When a parent dies, it’s unlike any other loss. It’s not just that something familiar is gone—it’s that someone foundational is gone. Their absence doesn’t just disrupt your routine, it unsettles your inner world. 

Ebony tells us what it felt like losing her mom: 

My mom was my person. She was the person I could call if I was in trouble or if I wanted to share some good news. If I needed advice, that’s who I would go to. When she was no longer there, that was a struggle. No longer receiving her daily phone calls was a huge gap in my life. I didn’t have that same type of support, and I didn’t think I would get it again because no one could really replace that. She knew me like no one else. 

Ebony’s words capture what so many feel when losing a parent but struggle to explain: Losing a parent doesn’t just break your heart—it destabilizes you.  

Your unpredictable emotions and feelings

Grief after the death of a parent can bring waves of emotions that aren’t always predictable. There may be shock—even if the death was expected. There’s sadness, as you might expect, but there may also be guilt, anger, numbness, or many other emotions.

For Valencia, after her father died, she battled deep depression. She shares, “I went through a depression that lasted about six months after he had passed. I felt pain and emptiness and a sense of loss. I felt in the core of my heart a deep, deep sadness that wasn’t lifting.” 

You may feel a flood of conflicting emotions, especially if your relationship was strained. Maria describes her experience after her mother died: 

At first I was obviously really sad, but I was also angry. I felt abandoned in some way. I felt intense sadness, intense grief. That was my first experience in losing someone through death. I was mad and sad and hurt and confused and resentful. Trying to process through so many emotions all at once was really difficult for me. I was also regretful about all the time we both wasted arguing with one another and being mad at each other. There were years we didn’t speak to each other because we were resentful.

The grief that comes from losing a parent doesn’t stick to a schedule either. It has a way of resurfacing—sometimes even years later—at major life milestones. Any of those times where you would have wanted to call your parents (or expected them in attendance), the reality of their absence will resurface. This might happen when your child is born, when you graduate, when you get sick, or when you have a career advancement. You may also find that when you reach the age when your parent died, grief may resurface. Any of these moments can reopen the wound of your loss. 

The sense of abandonment or being orphaned

There is also a psychological weight that comes with losing a parent. Did you notice that Maria used the word “abandoned”? That’s a common feeling. Author Dr. Albert Hsu, who was 25 at the time, felt abandoned after his father died by suicide. He says, “Losing my father suddenly made abandonment feel very real. How could he leave us in this way? How could he abandon me?” Nora uses the word “orphan" to describe her experience: “My dad’s gone. My mom’s gone. I’m going to be an orphan.” 

These words are common because the loss of a parent, no matter what age you are, makes you feel unanchored in the world. Without that steady presence, you may feel adrift. Losing a parent can stir up long-buried dynamics from childhood—roles you played, wounds you carried, or approval you longed for but never received. 

All of this makes grieving the death of a parent a unique and multifaceted experience. It’s not just the loss of a person. It’s also the loss of a relationship—linked to memories, identity, comfort, conflict, and connection (sometimes all at once). 

Because the loss of a parent runs so deep, it’s important to consider practical ways to find help as you walk through this. There is no set formula, but there are some practical coping strategies that others have found helpful. 

Coping strategies for dealing with the loss of a parent

What do you do with this kind of grief? Some people try to bottle it up or run from it. That’s what Karen tried to do for a year after her parents died in a plane crash. She says, 

I kept thinking this magic button was going to be pressed at the one-year mark [and I would somehow feel better]. Instead, that magic button was me having a complete meltdown in my leadership group at church. All someone did was say, “How are you really?” And I just fell apart. I had been trying to stay strong for everybody for that whole year. I had no business doing that with a newborn baby and a toddler, but I tried. I thought, “I have the strength within me. I can do this.” But not giving myself a chance to grieve and putting on a tough outer shell, it was not a good way to go. You need to let yourself grieve. I’ve learned that now.  

Allow yourself to grieve: What does it look like to let yourself grieve? For Karen, after trying to “stay strong” for that first year, it meant acknowledging that she couldn’t carry it all on her own. 

Seek helpful resources: Karen sought counseling to lean into her grief, and she started reading books on grief and loss, about people who had gone through hard times. She says, 

I wanted to read real stories, not pie in the sky, you’re going to be fine if you just pray. I wanted the nitty gritty. So I started seeking those out. I started looking for books about tragic stories. That sounds terrible, but it was not for the tragedy part, but for the triumph part. I would look to see how God got them through it. I wanted to know that. 

Attend a grief support group: Hearing how other people are navigating their own loss can be helpful. Michele attended GriefShare and found the healing she needed: 

Before, I didn’t feel like I could tell people what I was going through. But [at a GriefShare group], when I heard other people speak about what they were going through, it helped me to see myself in their stories. It helped me see that I wasn’t the only one going through this. It was helpful knowing I could be free to talk about things, that I didn’t have to hold back, and I could be honest about the feelings I had.  

Journal: Others have found help by journaling. Writing down what you are feeling can be helpful to process and to bring clarity to the fog. As Rob says after his loss, “Journaling helps me deal with the emotions and the struggles.”

Find comfort through music: Karen also filled her home with music—worship, hymns, classic rock, whatever helped her breathe again. Music, she says, became one of the biggest ways God helped her endure. It gave her space to feel and reminded her she wasn’t alone.

Anticipate emotional triggers: You should also be alert to certain dates and anniversaries which might trigger your grief. You might feel like you’re doing okay until a holiday sneaks up on you. Or you walk into a room and instinctively reach for your phone to call them—and then remember. These moments will come, sometimes without warning. When they do, let them. Let yourself miss them. Let yourself wish they were there. 

Practice thankfulness: Henry was eventually able to use moments like these to respond in thankfulness for the years he had with his mom and the special woman that she was. Though a day like Mother’s Day is tough, he explains how he uses it now: 

I get to remember who my mom was and some of the stuff we did together. I can dwell on the fact that she’s not here—or I can dwell on the fact that she was here. It’s been my experience that dwelling on how she impacted other people, how she impacted me, how she impacted our family provides a lot more comfort. That brings me more peace than dwelling on what she’s missing out on. Do I choose to dwell on the fact that she’s not here or that my granddaughter has some of her great-grandmother’s genes? I know it can be challenging, but attitude is a choice. What you choose to dwell on will shape your experience of grief. 

Grief won’t disappear overnight, but over time, as you engage the grief—that is, letting yourself feel, reflect, and adjust—healing begins to take root. There are a few strategies for long-term healing as well. 

Long-term healing: Remembering while moving forward

Grieving a parent’s death is not a task you complete—it’s something you will always carry. But it does change over time. In the beginning, it may feel all-consuming. But eventually, something shifts. The sharper edges of grief will begin to dull a little. The ache is still there, but it softens. It settles into your story rather than driving it. The goal isn’t to stop missing them, but rather to move forward, to find ways to honor their legacy, and to do so while you’re missing a piece of your life.  

Acceptance isn’t forgetting, it’s learning to remember differently. For many people, part of that aspect of healing includes finding ways to honor their parents’ memory. That might mean sharing stories, preserving traditions, cooking favorite meals, or passing down their character to future generations. 

What if your relationship was strained?

But let’s be honest. Not all memories are going to bring comfort. For those with complicated relationships, healing might look like making peace with what never got resolved. In these cases you aren’t just grieving the parent who died, you’re also grieving the parent you didn’t have. And that can bring its own kind of pain. 

You may discover in this process that you have to work through hurt from your childhood. As you walk through this kind of grief, bitterness will likely be a temptation. But holding on to bitterness will only deepen the wound. Releasing it doesn’t mean pretending everything was okay. It means letting go of what is still hurting you. That’s what Kerrie had to wrestle with after her mom died. She shares:

The process is not a short process. It is a long process. It is about sometimes trying to see their point of view, trying to put yourself in their shoes. When you can understand where they come from, it can lessen your retaliation reaction because then you understand more. We personalize things; we tend to think everything is about us. I began to work through that bitterness toward my mom with a counselor. That was the beginning of the process to release those feelings. It took a long time, but I began to let go of the bitterness, and I began to realize it was hurting me more than it was hurting her.

This kind of reframing doesn’t happen all at once. It is difficult work, which is why it will most likely be helpful to do it within a community with others. Some find help through faithful counselors. Many others find help through support groups. One that has helped many is GriefShare. 

How GriefShare helps you

In a GriefShare grief support group you will hear from counselors, pastors, healthcare professionals, and fellow grievers. You will receive a participant guide with exercises, journaling prompts, comfort from the Bible, and brief articles that will provide suggestions for responding to your loss. You can find a group meeting near you or online.

If you’ve lost a mother, you will also be encouraged and find strength by watching GriefShare’s Remembering Mom on-demand webinar.