Parenting in general is a lot of pressure, but when you add the nightmarish reality of losing a child into that mix, it gets even more complicated. For those of you who don’t know, we lost our son, Royce, back in 2018 just shortly before he turned two. Today, we have a one year old boy named Fletcher (he is adorable if we do say so ourselves). As much as we enjoy being Fletcher’s parents, the pressure of being a parent after losing a child comes with guilt if we feel as though we are not measuring up. With all of that being said, we wanted to share some of the steps we took to allow ourselves to be the best parents we could to our son, Fletcher.

 

Allow Yourself To Feel All The Emotions

This was such an important concept for us to fully grasp. After loss, many people think that the only acceptable emotion to feel is any and all negative ones. After a while, we realized that by only allowing ourselves to feel positive emotions, we were not allowing ourselves to grow and connect with one another like we should have been. There is always a way to create a positive moment, even when you think it is impossible. Don’t deprive yourself of happiness!

 

Seek Professional Help

We are huge advocates of therapy and have discussed the benefits it has brought us over the past few years. This was (and continues to be) a way for us to fully understand and learn how to express our grief in a healthy way. Therapy was a space that allowed us to heal, and healing was exactly what we needed. We have noticed that therapy commonly has a negative stigma surrounding it, which is so disappointing! Going to therapy doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you, it just means you have made the decision to take the necessary steps to become a better version of yourself.

 

No Parent Is The ‘Perfect’ Parent

Every parent wants to be the best parent, but when it comes down to it, there is no such thing as a perfect parent, just the perfect parent for your child. Parenting in general is hard, but parenting after losing a child can be even harder. We understand that mistakes will happen. We might lose our patience, mess up, or say the wrong thing at the wrong time. These quirks don’t make us bad parents, and our previous experiences should lead us to believe that either. We learned to appreciate all of the small moments more and not be too hard on ourselves. It wouldn’t be fair to beat ourselves up for something we can’t change.