Grief can feel like a heavy burden for children, especially when they don’t yet have the words or tools to understand their feelings. But grief also holds the potential for growth, resilience, and meaning-making—processes that help children not only survive loss but find new ways to live with it.
Meaning-making in grief means helping children create a personal understanding of what the loss means to them and how it shapes their story. Resilience-building focuses on strengthening a child’s ability to cope, adapt, and find hope despite the pain.
Why Meaning-Making Matters
Children naturally seek to understand the world around them. After a loss, they may wrestle with big questions: Why did this happen? What does it mean for me? Am I safe? These questions aren’t just intellectual—they touch their emotional core.
Helping children find meaning doesn’t require having all the answers. Instead, it’s about guiding them to:
Explore their feelings
Express their memories and thoughts
Recognize how the person who died continues to influence their life
Build connections to family, culture, or spirituality that bring comfort
When children can place their grief within a larger context—whether through stories, rituals, or shared family memories—they begin to integrate the loss into their life story, making it less overwhelming.
Building Resilience: What Helps?
Resilience isn’t about avoiding grief or “being strong” all the time. It’s about learning to face loss with support, flexibility, and hope. For children, this means:
Safe emotional expression: Encouraging kids to talk, draw, write, or play out their feelings in a way that feels natural to them.
Consistent routines: Maintaining predictable schedules helps create stability and safety amid change.
Positive relationships: Being surrounded by caring adults and peers who listen without judgment.
Empowerment: Allowing children to make choices about how they remember their loved one or participate in memorial activities.
Self-care: Teaching children to recognize when they need rest, movement, or quiet time.
These steps nurture a child’s internal resources to adapt and thrive, even in the face of loss.
Legacy and Family Bonds
Meaning-making and resilience are often strongest within family connections. Sharing stories, traditions, and rituals together honors the memory of the person who died and reinforces a child’s sense of belonging.
Families might create memory books, plant gardens, or develop new rituals that keep the loved one’s spirit alive. These shared activities foster connection and help children see that grief, while painful, is also a bond that links past and present.
Using Stories to Support Growth
Books can be a gentle way to open conversations about grief and resilience. The Terrible, Super Sad Day by Vanessa Valles, LCSW-S, is a powerful resource designed to help children recognize and name their feelings. Its honest, age-appropriate language and relatable characters give kids a voice through their grief journey.
Reading together can invite children to explore meaning and hope in a safe, familiar setting.
Final Thoughts
Helping children find meaning and build resilience after loss is a compassionate, ongoing process. It takes time, patience, and creativity—but with support, children can carry grief alongside hope.
By walking with them through this journey, caregivers provide the foundation for healing and strength that lasts a lifetime.
Looking for a resource to guide your child through grief?
The Terrible, Super Sad Day offers comfort and clarity through story, helping children and caregivers navigate the most difficult of days with honesty and hope. Buy your copy HERE!