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After we lose our mom we go through a huge range of emotions which are all a part of grieving - sadness, depression, anger, rage, insecurity, selfishness, hopelessnes, helplessness, fear. It can pretty much run the gamut of almost every negative emotion you can think of! And when we are going through all that - we expect that our siblings and even our father are going through the same thing. But that is not necessarily true. I write about how grief is unique to each one of us, but at some level when we grieve we tend to expect that since our siblings and our dad all lost the same person, that we are all grieving the same. It's as if we are so wrapped in our own grief that we begin to feel as if everyone in our imediate family should be (or is) feeling the same way as we do. Unfortunately that is rarely (if ever) the case. Our grief may be similar to that of our siblings - and we'll talk about that in a future podcast - but for our dad - it's a totally different 'ballgame.'
Here is the key difference. I know this will sound very obvious but it's important to point out: we lost our mother - our caregiver. Dad lost his life partner. Just as the relationship between a mother and child is different from that between a mother and father - so too is the grief.
So what do you do about your Dad? Especially if you feel strongly about how he is (or isn't) responding to the loss of your mom? Well, here are a few tips. Knowing that we all have a slightly different relationship with our father, some of these may work better for you than others:
So talk to your dad. You never know what he is truly feeling until you ask or discuss it. It will have a two-way effect, in that not only will it help you to better understand his feelings but he will understand your side as well. Empathy can be a wonderful thing for stengthening the relationship with your dad.