Teaching My Son to Grieve: A Story About Love, Loss, and Emotional Honesty

Grief doesn’t always begin with death. Sometimes, it begins with a missing presence—a relationship that never existed the way we hoped it would.

Today, I want to share a personal story about how grief has shown up in my life. I’ll keep the details light, but I hope this encourages you to reflect on the stories that have shaped your own grief.

I’m a mother to two boys. My youngest is six, and my oldest is just shy of 13. My family is not your typical nuclear family. I’m divorced, and my children have different biological fathers.

My first son was born when I was just 19 years old. His father chose not to be involved. At the time, I was navigating both the life-changing experience of becoming a mother and the heartbreak of abandonment. I remember looking down at my newborn—this perfect, beautiful little soul—and feeling an ache I couldn’t fully explain. How could anyone walk away from someone so perfect and innocent?

In those early days, I was grieving the loss of a dream. The loss of a future I had once imagined. And, in a way, I was grieving for my son, too—for what I knew he would grow up missing.

Grief is complicated. And yet, as a society, we barely talk about it. We don’t teach our children how to process it. We avoid it or act like it doesn't exist. And that's never worked out well for us. We teach our children how to manage anger. How to try again after failure. But what about grief? Well, we try to fix it. Solve it. Move past it. Quickly.

That’s why I’ve come to appreciate the principles of gentle parenting—not because it's trendy or without criticism, but because it embraces something vital: emotional acknowledgment.

Gentle parenting doesn’t say, “Stop crying and go to your room.” It says, “I see that you're sad. Can I sit with you?” It doesn't punish feelings; it holds space for them. And in that way, it mirrors the Grief Recovery Method—a practice I deeply believe in. Both approaches start from the same place: that our emotional experiences are valid, and they deserve to be heard.

Grief is not the problem. It's a natural, human response to change and loss. The problem is when we don’t have the tools to process that grief. That’s when it turns inward. That’s when it starts to hurt more.

At one point, I had a realization: I couldn’t undo the absence of my son’s biological father. I couldn’t rewrite the story. But I could choose how we lived with it. I could choose not to hide it or reshape it. Instead, I decided to honour our story in its entirety.

Let's remember the most common myths about grief in this context:

1. Replace the loss - "Your step-dad has always been there for you"

2. Keep busy - "It's okay hun, let's go get some ice cream to get your mind off of it."

3. Grieve alone - "Just go to your room and have some quiet time until you feel better."

4. Don't feel bad - "Plenty of kids grow up without a father."

5. Be strong - "Hey, don't let your deadbeat dad bring you down, you're better than this."

6. Time heals - "Don't worry hunny, one day you won't care as much."

Remember: THESE ARE MYTHS. These are what people will often offer as a solution to the emotions stemming from grief, but they are NOT HELPFUL. These often negate or avoid the very reasonable emotional response to a loss.

Another behaviour that's done with the best intentions is when we talk about our own losses in an attempt to empathize, but often unintentionally take up the space that our children need to grieve. There's a fine line between "I miss him too hunny," or "That makes me feel sad, too. Should we have a hug?" and "My dad left me when I was just a baby, at least you got to spend some time with yours," or "I know how you feel because my Dad died."

The best approach to supporting someone who is opening up about their grief is to become a heart with eyes, ears, and no mouth. Make space, do not take up space, when you're trying to be supportive.

Remember, the narrative we construct for our lives affects the way our children's own internal narrative will sound. Always choose emotional honesty and don't forget to make space for the bad. We need to acknowledge, honour, and care for our good feelings and our negative feelings.

When my son felt sad on Father’s Day at daycare—because other kids had someone there and he didn’t—I didn’t try to distract him. I didn’t say, “It’s okay” or “Other kids don’t have dads either.” I didn’t minimize his pain or compare it. I sat with him in his sadness. I let him grieve.

He didn’t need a lesson or a fix. He just needed to feel his feelings safely. And that’s what grief recovery teaches us. That grief isn’t just sorrow—it’s an emotional truth waiting to be witnessed.

That moment passed quickly, as emotions often do with young children. But those three minutes were sacred. That was my window to teach. That’s when he learned: all of your feelings deserve time, space, and attention. That's when I taught my son that I wasn't afraid of his feelings, and he shouldn't be either.

As he grew, we continued to be open about our stories and about the unique structure of our family. We never hid it, danced around it, and I never filtered how he felt about it. It became just a part of his story. He didn't feel abandoned, because the grief never got that far.

The loss of his biological father never became a deep pain within him because everytime he had feelings about the absence, he had a space for his emotions, thoughts, and feelings. His emotions never internalized or amplified in his inner echo chamber, because he had the opportunity to outwardly express and experience each thought and feeling. Because we sat with those feelings, he doesn't have them all in his proverbial "jars" to reopen and address later in life.

Our losses are written into the stories of our lives. And our stories are sacred. Every experience and every response to those experience needs space and as humans, we desire witness.

As a parent, if your child is struggling with grief, the most important thing you can do to help them is to first become complete in your own relationships and address your own unresolved grief.

The Grief Recovery Method provides the tools to heal from our losses. Once we have those tools, it's monkey see, monkey do. Our children benefit from our own healing as we model healthy emotional behaviour and pass our own skills on to them. So, if you're helping a child process a loss - of any kind - now is the perfect day to start your own healing journey.

Yours,

Jes Knoop

Founder