Grieving a Parent While Parenting: There Are No Stages

Joyce Quitasol, MHC, MA

I used to think I knew how to grieve. When I faced loss, I labeled the stages: 

When I lost my marriage: This is shock. 

When I lost my naiveté on 9/11: This is anger. 

When I lost my grandfather: This is acceptance. 

When I lost my sense of security during COVID: This is depression. 

When I lost my youth after a milestone birthday: This is bargaining. 

When I lost my sense of purpose when my first child went to college: This is denial. 

I thought I could name the stage, understand the feeling, and move through it. But losing my dad while raising three children was different. There are no clean spaces to mourn. Parenting thrusts you forward. Dinner needs to be cooked, camps need to get booked, those parent-teacher conferences need to be squeezed into the schedule, and the kids’ personal drama needs to be unpacked and tended to.  

I struggled to understand the “structure” of my grief. Is this depression? Anger? Am I sliding back and forth between stages? How long will I feel this guilt? Ultimately, I felt like I wasn’t “doing grief correctly” even though I was carefully labelling and following the stages.  

And that’s where the problem begins. 

There’s a widespread misconception about the stages of grief. The most common model used in Western culture was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. When facing death and loss, we often refer to the Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. 

This model continues to be a controversial method for processing grief. In On Death and Dying, Kübler-Ross described conversations with terminally ill patients about their experiences of dying. The research focused primarily on older, white men facing their own deaths, which differs from the experience of grieving the loss of someone else. 

These subjective, nuanced perspectives provide a very limited lens for understanding the varied types of loss across a multitude of cultures. In On Grief and Grieving, Kübler-Ross expressed that these stages were not developed for those who are grieving and regretted the way they had been translated into society as a linear progression, contributing to the belief that people should grieve in an ordered fashion. 

For me, challenging that expectation meant looking at my own grief differently. Holding the dual roles of responsible parent and grieving child taught me to understand my grief in a more personalized way and to challenge my own assumptions about what grief should look like. Throughout my journey, I discovered how expectations and misconceptions colored my own healing process. 

Expectations about crying 

Many factors influence how we think about crying when experiencing loss. Cultural and societal expectations can create pressure around emotional expression, particularly when we equate outward signs of grief with a person's internal experience. If someone doesn't cry at a loved one's funeral, does that mean they are in denial? Were they not close to the person who died? 

As a parent, I have little time to intentionally reflect on or intellectualize my grief. The loss of my father hits me in unexpected moments: during morning drop-off or while riding the train home from work. Sometimes I cry shamelessly in public; other times, I swallow my emotions while sitting alone in my kitchen. 

Relationships and identities are complex, and grief can be just as complex, often manifesting in ways we might not expect. Understanding your relationship with emotions and emotional expression can give you more room to process your grief in a way that feels personally aligned. 

What are your own expectations about tears and crying?  

When Time Isn’t Enough 

Although there is no fixed timeline for grief, the intensity of our grief may change. This can feed into the belief that time alone is what heals us. While the passage of time can allow us a bit of space from intense feelings of loss, for most people grief is too complex to wait for it to fade away naturally.  

As a busy parent, I hoped my grief could just run alongside me as I bounced from one responsibility to the next. But emotions wait for no one, and my kids are woven into the fabric of my life. 

In quiet moments of thought, I eventually shared memories with my kids because they do not know the father I know. I told them that the pasta sauce that we make as a family was his creation. The nicknames I gave the kids were once mine, given to me by him. The instruments they play originated from his love of classical music. 

Time gave me space, but engaging with my grief allowed me to begin integrating the loss and opening myself up to healing. Integration can look different for everyone. It might mean simply naming the grief, honoring a loved one's memory through shared stories, or making space for active reflection. 

What are some ways you feel willing to engage with the tender feelings of loss? 

How Grief Changes Identity 

Rather than viewing grief as a linear process made up of tasks, phases, or predictable changes, more recent models of grief challenge the expectation that healing must follow a prescribed progression. Significant loss is not only painful; it can also change how we see ourselves and our place in the world. 

I have always parented in the likeness of my father with his values, his humor, and his tendency to hum while cooking. But as my children grew older and my father became a more distant presence in their lives, I felt a desire to connect them to him in mindful ways. I became softer, slower, more intentional about remembering him and sharing my love of him with them. My core identity was essentially the same, but it shifted to make room for my process and my loss.  

How have you changed in response to a particular loss? 

Grieving my father while raising my children has taught me that grief doesn't follow a schedule, and healing doesn't require me to move through a series of stages. Some days, I carry his memory quietly; other days, his absence finds me in the middle of the day-to-day chaos of parenting. In this part of my journey, I am learning that I don't have to choose between being a grieving daughter and a present mother.  

I invite you to gently challenge your own expectations of grief. What are some of the ways you can make space for your own process?