Grief After a Parent Dies: Coping With Loss & Healing

Losing a parent can change your life in ways that are difficult to prepare for. Even when a death was anticipated, the reality of living without your parent can feel very different from imagining it. There is also no one way that grief after a parent dies is supposed to look. You may feel devastated, angry, numb, anxious, relieved, or many different emotions at the same time.

A loss like this can deeply affect your mental health. To help you navigate this, we’ll explore:

• What grief after losing a parent can feel like.
• How parental loss can affect mental health.
• Ways of coping with losing a parent.
• How therapy can help with healing.

What Grief After Losing a Parent Can Feel Like

Grief is a natural response to loss, but it’s often unpredictable. Grief can involve distress, confusion, anger, yearning, and so many other sensations, both physical and emotional.^[1] And, as an adult, losing a parent clearly isn’t an uncommon experience.

According to 2021 U.S. Census data, around 44% of people have lost at least one parent.^[2] But despite it being a common occurrence and a natural part of life, grief after a parent dies is a complicated experience.

After losing a parent, grief can leave you dwelling on the past or feeling apprehensive about the future. You might be grieving a father or mother who you spoke with every day, someone you spent years caring for, or a parent with whom you had a distant or difficult relationship. Mourning a parent might feel like:

• Deep sadness or frequent crying.
• Anger or irritability.
• Numbness or disbelief.
• Guilt about things you did or didn’t say.
• Relief after a long illness or difficult caregiving period.
• Difficulty concentrating.
• Changes in sleep or appetite.
• A sense that everyday life feels unfamiliar.
• Loneliness, even when other people are around.

Sometimes you might not even feel any of these emotions right away after such a major life event. You might be in disbelief or so busy in the first few days or weeks of bereavement. The feelings might not hit until life starts to slow down because you’re busy managing funeral arrangements, paperwork, or family responsibilities.

How Losing a Parent Can Affect Mental Health

The death of a parent can affect all areas of life. The American Psychological Association suggests that parental loss during adulthood can also shift self-identity, making people reassess:^[3]

• Relationships.
• Priorities.
• Future goals.

You may also find yourself suddenly responsible for the surviving parent, managing an estate, or trying to keep traditions going without the person who once organized them.

Grief also greatly impacts mental health and is associated with several mental health conditions. A 2024 study showed that 34% of people experiencing grief also experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 30% experienced major depressive disorder.^[4]

After a parent’s death, depression might look like:

• Persistent hopelessness.
• Loss of interest in activities you normally enjoy.
• Difficulty getting out of bed.
• Significant changes in sleep or appetite.
• Trouble concentrating.
• Feeling worthless.
• Difficulty completing normal tasks.

Loss can also change your sense of safety, and you may become more aware that other people could die too. After a parent’s death, anxiety might show up as worrying excessively about another parent, your partner, your children, or your own health.

How to Cope With Losing a Parent

Emotional recovery after losing a parent often involves finding small ways to care for yourself while adjusting to such a major change. Some ways of coping with parent bereavement include:

1. Letting Yourself Grieve in Your Own Way

Everyone grieves differently. You might cry all the time, while your sister rarely cries at all. Or you might feel numb or incredibly angry while your brother seems relatively normal for days at a time.

Try not to measure your grief against someone else’s. Different responses don’t necessarily mean that someone loved that parent more or less.

2. Keep Basic Parts of Your Routine When You Can

Complicated grief from parent loss has a way of upending our structure and routines. When mourning a parent feels like it’s disrupting daily life, try to maintain basic habits around:

• Sleep.
• Meals.
• Movement.
• Work.
• Other family responsibilities.

However, don’t expect yourself to function exactly as you did before the loss. The CDC recommends maintaining routines as one way of creating order and focusing on what remains within your control while grieving.^[5]

3. Stay Connected Without Forcing Yourself to Socialize

Grief after a parent dies can feel like loneliness, and loneliness is associated with poor mental health.^[6] You might not feel like being around people, yet isolation can not only worsen difficult emotions, but also negatively affect physical health.^[7]

Parent loss support can be emotional or practical. Maybe someone brings dinner, sits with you while you sort belongings, checks in by text, or lets you talk about your parent without trying to make the sadness disappear.

Be specific if people ask how they can help. “Could you come over for dinner?” or “Can you help me make these phone calls?” gives someone a concrete way to support you.

4. Find Ways to Maintain a Connection With Your Parent

Life after losing a parent keeps going, but returning to normal life doesn’t require you to erase your parent from your life. Find ways to honor them with meaningful activities or traditions. For instance, you might try:

• Making one of your parent’s favorite recipes.
• Looking through photographs or writing down stories or memories.
• Visiting a place you enjoyed together.
• Creating a memory book.
• Celebrating their birthday in a meaningful way.
• Talking about them with people who knew them.

These rituals can change over time. What feels comforting during the first year may be different from what feels meaningful five years later.

How Therapy Can Help After Losing a Parent

You don’t have to wait until grief becomes unbearable to consider therapy after losing a parent. Therapy can provide a private place to talk about parts of your grief you might find difficult to discuss elsewhere. Depending on your experience, grief counseling may focus on:

• Processing the loss or working through emotions like guilt, anger, or regret.
• Managing depression or anxiety.
• Adjusting to changes in family roles.
• Exploring unresolved parts of the parent-child relationship.
• Rebuilding routines and social connections.
• Learning emotional regulation and coping skills.
• Finding meaningful ways to remember your parent.

Studies have shown that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness are beneficial for treating prolonged grief disorder.^[8] Grief counseling isn’t about convincing you to “get over” your parent. Instead, treatment can help you find ways to live alongside the loss without feeling consumed by it.

Get Mental Health Support After Losing a Parent With Mission Connection

At Mission Connection, we understand that grief can affect your emotional, physical, and mental health. That’s why we take a whole-person approach to treatment. By combining evidence-based therapies with holistic approaches, we help you develop coping skills and heal.

We also know that adding treatment to an already full life can feel overwhelming. Mission Connection offers flexible outpatient treatment options, including virtual telehealth and a hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care.

In addition to standard outpatient care at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, we also offer more intensive levels of care, such as a partial hospitalization program (PHP) or an intensive outpatient program (IOP). We are in-network with most major insurance providers.

If grief after a parent dies is making it difficult to manage everyday life, you don’t have to handle every part of it by yourself. Reach out to us online or call us at 866-833-1822 to learn how our personalized parent loss support can help you move forward while continuing to honor the relationship you’ve lost.

Grief After a Parent Dies FAQ

We know that grief after a parent dies is complicated. You might still have questions about the different emotions you feel, how to manage life without them, and ways to heal. Below, we’ll address some of those questions about losing a parent, grief, and how to cope.