Becoming a Parent After Losing a Parent
Nobody tells you about the moment you're standing at daycare pickup, watching a grandmother scoop up her granddaughter or the way your child says mama or daddy a hundred times before noon, and somewhere underneath the noise of it, you notice that you will never be able to call for yours the same way again. Nobody warns you about the baby shower where everyone else's mother showed up. Or the first time your child gets really sick, that 2am fever that spikes fast, and you realize there is no one to call who would just come. Who would get in the car without being asked. Or the ordinary Tuesday — your kid does something small and completely themselves, something that would have made your parent laugh in a specific way that only they had — and there is no one to tell who would have understood exactly why it mattered. Or realizing how quickly your child is growing and it’s a reminder of time passing without your parent in your life. There are endless moments I was not prepared for.
These are the moments that don't make it into the grief books. The ones that find you in the middle of your regular life, when you thought you were fine and moving along.
And maybe for you, the loss isn't a death. Maybe it's an estrangement, an absence, a parent who was never quite there in the way you needed. The grief of parenting without them is just as real — and just as rarely talked about.
I know this not just as a therapist who sits with grief every week, but as someone living it myself.
Why Parenthood Wakes Grief Back Up
Grief doesn't follow a timeline. It doesn't retire just because years have passed or because you've done the work or because life has moved forward in ways you're genuinely grateful for.
It resurfaces around transitions. Moments where the landscape of your life shifts dramatically enough that the loss becomes newly visible against it. And parenthood — from pregnancy through every milestone that follows — is full of those moments.
The village that was supposed to show up. The grandparent who was supposed to be there at the hospital, at the school play, at the ordinary pickup. The person who knew you before you were anyone's parent, who would have looked at your child and seen something of you in them. Who would have just come. There are also so many milestones, and parents are usually the witness and keeper of your personal history, milestones and family history. Sometimes when a parent dies, that knowledge dies with them.
When that person isn't there, you feel the absence differently than you've felt it before. Because now it isn't just you who lost them. Your child has lost someone they never got to have. And that is a grief that doesn't have a clean name yet — but it is completely real, and you are not alone in carrying it.
What This Can Feel Like
Complicated. Contradictory. Joy and grief braided so tightly together you can't find the seam.
You can love your child with your whole body and still feel the loss of who should have been there to witness it. You can feel grateful for your family and quietly furious that it doesn't look the way it was supposed to. You can be completely present in a moment and somewhere else at the same time — in the room, and also in a memory, or in a version of your life that didn't happen.
None of this means something is wrong with you. It means you are grieving something real, in real time, while also building something real. Those two things can coexist. They often do.
There can also be guilt — for the grief that shows up inside what should be happy moments. For the days when you feel the absence more than the presence. For the parts of yourself that are still angry, still sad, still not over it in the way you thought you'd be by now.
You are not ruining anything by feeling this. Your grief is not a shadow over your child's life. It is part of your story — and your story is something you are already passing down, even now.
The Identity Piece Nobody Talks About
Becoming a parent changes who you are. This is true for everyone.
But when you are becoming a parent while also navigating the loss of one, there is an identity layer that doesn't get much airtime. You are stepping into a role — parent — that your own parent once held. And that creates a strange, tender kind of mirror.
You find yourself thinking about your parent differently. Understanding things you didn't understand before. Feeling closer to them in some ways, and further in others. You might catch yourself doing something they did, or swearing you never will, or wishing you could ask them something you never thought to ask when there was still time.
Who were they, really, when they were where you are now? What was it like for them? What would they have done in this moment?
These questions don't have answers. But they are not empty questions. They are part of how you carry the relationship forward into the new chapter of your life.
What Helps
There is no fixing this. There is no getting to a place where the absence doesn't occasionally ache. But there are ways to move through it that feel less alone.
Naming it. Not just to yourself — though that matters — but out loud, to someone who can hold it. The specific grief of parenting without your parent is not one that most people will bring up at a playdate. Which means if you want to talk about it, you usually have to be the one to open the door. It is worth opening.
Letting the grief and the joy exist at the same time. You don't have to choose between them. You don't have to postpone the grief until you're done celebrating, or push the joy aside to make room for sadness. They are both yours, and they can both be present in the same moment.
Creating rituals. Small, ordinary ways of keeping the person in the life of your family. A story you tell. A recipe you make. A name you whisper on a birthday. The relationship doesn't have to end because the person isn't here — it just changes form.
Finding people who get it. This is the part that can be the hardest to find, and the most important. People who have lost a parent and are also raising children. People who understand the specific math of that — the love and the grief and the missing and the ordinary Tuesday that turns into something else entirely.
You Don't Have to Do This Alone
If any of this has landed somewhere in you — if you've been carrying this quietly, without quite knowing where to put it — I want you to know that there is space for it.
I'm facilitating a workshop this June specifically for people navigating this experience: Becoming a Parent After Losing a Parent. It's a live, virtual space to explore the grief, the identity shifts, the complicated feelings, and the ways forward — with other people who know exactly what you're talking about.
It's open to parents, expectant parents, and helping professionals who want to go deeper with this material.
June 25th | 3:00–4:30pm EST / 12:00–2:30pm PST | $40
