<h3>The Day Everything Changed</h3><p>I was ten years of age. My brother Declan had died just a year before. My parents had just returned from a hospital appointment for my dad, Frank. The doctors called it “Broken Heart Syndrome.” He needed a triple bypass within 24 hours or he would die of a heart attack. My dad was just 40.</p><p>He did have the triple bypass the next day—and he is still with us, tenderly and gratefully, 28 years on.</p><h3>Understanding Broken Heart Syndrome</h3><p>This “Broken Heart Syndrome” makes sense to me now.</p><p>Of course, his son had died at just seven years of age from a brain tumour. He was heartbroken. There is no other explanation. As a young child, witnessing my parents’ health fears come to life after Declan died was extremely scary. My heart dropped into my stomach with fear. It made the possibility of another death feel real again.</p><h3>A Family of Shattered Hearts</h3><p>My dad Frank, my mother Helen, and all of us siblings—six of us remaining—had to find ways to tend to our own heartbreak. We were a collective, a unified shattered heart. But we were also individuals. We had to learn to cope in different ways and gain hope and strength from what brought us distraction from the pain—and hopefully some joy too.</p><p>There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to soothing our broken hearts in grief. For my dad, it was physical at that moment. For some of us, it was emotional and mental. So we found our own ways.</p><h3>Surrendering to the Pain</h3><p>A way that worked for me in calming and realigning this fractured muscle of love was to surrender into it. To genuinely feel it. Even though I was terrified of what I would find in there—worried that the desolate pain would capture my entire being. I feared that going to that gut-wrenching place would lead me to a shadowed life of despair and suffering.</p><p>I believed if I could ignore it, then it would go away. I learned that this is not how it works.</p><p>Allowing myself the space to really acknowledge the emptiness and disintegration of what was once a whole, strong, and immaculate source of love—and coming to the reality that this was now different.</p><p>Yes, a piece of me had been internally fragmented. And along with this, I noticed the physical pain in my chest.</p><h3>A Grounding Practice for Grief</h3><p>What you can do right now:</p><ul style="list-style-type:circle"><li>Ensure you are in a place where you feel safe. Sit down with your two feet on the floor.</li><li>Notice your heart. Allow yourself some space to feel into this shattered part of your anatomy. Name it and claim it. This is yours. This is a part of you, and it is there through the absolute love and purity of connection that you had the honour of knowing through your loved one.</li><li>Notice if it is physically painful. It may feel overwhelming. Take a breath. Yes, breathe into that overwhelm. As you read this now, take a deep, intentional breath of acknowledgement—right down into those broken parts of your heart. Hold it, and release the sense of freedom and connection you feel as you allow your shoulders to drop into this reality.</li><li>Don’t be afraid to feel into it. You have already been feeling it, but often you’ve tried to push it away. Today is different. It is safe to tune inwards. This is sadness. This is loss. Your heart needs to be acknowledged, felt, and held.</li></ul><h3>Holding Your Heart with Intention</h3><p>Hold your heart intentionally. Place your hand over your heart. Notice the warmth from your hands entering the skin, moving down through the blood and deep into the muscles and chambers of your weary heart.</p><p>Give yourself this space, this time. You are here right now. Breathe in and breathe out.</p><p>Remember—you are feeling this pain for a reason. Tune in to yourself. Through connection to your own body, soul, and energy, you can begin to bring soothing and healing into each of your cells and crevices.</p><p>It is okay to feel that release. It is okay to let that go. It does not mean that you are letting them go. It means that you are letting the pain of the absence go—not them.</p><h3>A Balm for the Heart</h3><p>Think of soothing as though you are placing a calming, loving balm around your heart. It is safe, and it is mending. Your nervous system will begin to regulate.</p><p>Each of us has a different connection to our loved one who has died. However, where we notice their absence is internally—in our hearts, in the emptiness, and in the sense of numbness.</p><p>By tuning into your heartspace, it can reawaken the sensations and the energy flow, which in turn offers your body and soul vitality and movement. The blood will start to flow again where it once felt cold and shaken, as you gently and delicately soothe your broken heart with contention, intention, and warmth.</p><h3>Healing Begins Within</h3><p>These are grounding techniques that are simple and accessible. Your intentions are available to you at all times.</p><p>As a co-founder of <a href="https://www.jacintassmile.ie/">Jacinta’s Smile</a>, it is important for me and my sisters to remember to tune into our hearts and offer soothing. By doing this, we can offer support and regulation to others.</p><p>Healing begins by going inwards—and in turn, we can illuminate from the inside out.</p>

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Soothing a Broken Heart: A Child’s Journey Through Grief and Healing

<h3>The Day Everything Changed</h3><p>I was eight years of age when I found out that my little brother Declan had a malignant brain tumour. He was six. He died six months later at the tender age of seven. The day my parents received the diagnosis was the day that would echo throughout every essence of each of our beings. They tried all of the challenging and demanding treatments, and they would do it again in the morning if they knew it would save him. It didn’t work.</p><h3>A Family in Crisis</h3><p>We spent six months in and out of hospitals, hearing hushed conversations, feeling left out as he received all the attention (remember this is a child's perspective), and feeling confused. We were a family of six children, ranging in age from three to twelve.</p><p>The youngest sibling, in her early development and attuned to her parents’ energy, felt the drops in their stomach after each consultation. The oldest sibling, on the cusp of her teenage years, craved independence but was held back by fear. The worst had actually happened, and it might happen again.</p><p>Jacinta, Fintan, and I were in the middle, followed by the birth of our brother Sheridan the year after Declan died.</p><h3>Why I Became a Therapist</h3><p>I decided to become a therapist because I was desperately searching to understand what happened to my family. It changed in front of my eyes, and neither my younger self nor my adult self understood why.</p><p>As I leaned into my therapy work, as terrifying as it was, I learned that this change is what can happen in families. I thought it was just us. Discovering this offered me a sense of peace. I now knew that when a child dies in the family, life as it once was has been uprooted, altered, and disturbed. There is now a new sway to the family dynamic, and it can bring direction or disruption. For us, it was both.</p><h3>How Children Grieve Differently</h3><p>When a child dies in the family and the remaining children are still young, this fragments or cements their internal language and perceptions even further. This will have an impact on how the remaining sibling grieves.</p><p>It used to confuse me how all my siblings reacted so differently to losing Declan. We grew up in the same house, had the same parents, ate the same dinners, had the same holidays, and even wore the same clothes. We had loving parents who treated us equally. How did we all behave and view our lives so very differently?</p><h3>My Quiet Grief</h3><p>My grief for Declan was quiet, hidden. I unconsciously decided to stay small and not cause any further distress. This meant I was always seen as the good child — independent and able to look after myself. In turn, I wasn’t always offered help, and I certainly didn’t learn how to ask for it. Even into my adult life, I struggled with this.</p><p>I now know it’s my responsibility to sit with this shadow side and learn that it’s okay to be vulnerable. This is a part of me that still needs compassion and healing.</p><h3>Louder Grief and Coping Mechanisms</h3><p>For two of my siblings, their grief was louder. It poured into the sitting room with early use of alcohol, self-destruction, and harmful behaviours. Yes, part of this is associated with the early teenage years, striving for independence and yearning for belonging, but it was exacerbated by the sense of loss within the household.</p><p>Another sibling’s beautiful and kind exterior masked the fear of love. She knew the realities of what it was like to really love and care for someone and have them taken away so unexpectedly and unfairly. She was older, so she could comprehend the intricate delicacy of what an unnatural loss can bring. She fought hard to keep us balanced and, as the oldest and being a girl, believed it was her job to emotionally fix everyone.</p><p>It is now her responsibility to care for herself as well as she has cared for all of us.</p><h3>Healing Takes Time</h3><p>This all takes time. It takes awareness of destructive patterns learned through crisis and fear of another loss. So it will take time to unlearn these coping skills. They have served us well thus far, but there comes a time when they are no longer healthy and are holding us back.</p><p>This is the work: awareness and compassion for our young selves. Remember that the brain is flexible and can create new neural pathways of love, safety, and calm. It will take time, trials, and errors — but it is possible to learn to regulate your nervous system again.</p><h3>A Beautiful Analogy</h3><p>I was once gifted the knowledge of how to explain the impact of sibling loss by the wise and humble Brid Carroll of the Irish Childhood Bereavement Network. She told me that siblings represent the fingers on our hand. Each finger has a different print, different lines, and different sizes. This represents the personality, core beliefs, and coping mechanisms of the individual sibling. Even though they come from the same body, they are all unique.</p><p>This is how siblings experience the loss of a brother or sister — uniquely.</p><h3>Support and Compassion</h3><p>There is no single approach when it comes to experiencing loss as a child, and each situation may require a tailored approach. Take time to read articles by the Irish Childhood Bereavement Network on what you can do to support grieving children. And remember to do so with compassion and kindness to your tender heart.</p><p>And also remember to contact <a href="https://www.jacintassmile.ie/">Jacinta’s Smile</a> services to see how we can support you.</p>

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Sibling Loss in Childhood: A Personal Reflection on Grief, Growth and Healing

<p><i>What is it like to lose a sibling? Well, it's like swimming without a float — you can do it, but it's not as sturdy or buoyant.</i></p><p>I only knew my life with Jacinta in it. She was 17 months old when I was born. Our lives grew together. I was 28 when she died. I never had to protect myself, she did that for me. She was allowed to call me names or push me around as siblings often do but, my God! If someone did that outside of our family, she would be the first one to ride over on her BMX bike and swiftly wheelie them out of my life.</p><h3>The Void She Left Behind</h3><p>When she died, I felt exposed to the world. Vulnerable to a part of me that never had to show up before, because she always did it for me. I didn't need the confidence to speak; she did it for me. I now had to find a voice, and I didn't know what that sounded like without her tone joining in with mine.</p><p>Losing a sibling brings a sense of unmasking. An unwanted unfolding of a barrage of questions:</p><ul><li>Who am I without her?</li><li>Where do I belong now?</li><li>Where is my place in the family?</li><li>What roles do I have to step into now that hers is vacant?</li><li>Where will I stand in our family photo?</li><li>Are they her friends or my friends?</li><li>Do they still want to be friends with me?</li><li>Where is my place? </li><li>Where do I belong if it's not beside her? </li><li>Where will I share all of our memories and stories?</li><li>Who can I laugh with about the mom joke she made up in our bedroom when we were six and supposed to be asleep?</li><li>What will I do with the song in my head that she used to ask me to sing to put her to sleep every night?</li></ul><h3>The Small Things Are the Big Things</h3><p>These questions may seem trivial, but that's the way a sibling relationship blooms. It's always the small things. Together, they are the big things, the shared memories. There is a bond there that cannot be filled.</p><p>From childhood to death at an old age, we imagine our lives together floating through love, rivalry, shared joy, shared pain, misunderstandings, disconnections, and reconnections.</p><p>This is how we believed it would be. There was safety in that. A sense of belonging, teamwork, partnership, and a bittersweet symphony of all of life's moments. The struggles and the strengths were felt and witnessed by each other. In place of this, there is now a loneliness that feels hollow and yet substantial.</p><h3>The Secondary Grief</h3><p>These moments were experienced by two connected members — members of a union. When this membership is broken, there is a sense of being outcast and different. It can cause a sensation of losing the person you once were. And in that, there is also a secondary grief.</p><p>And then, seeping into the field of bereavement, arrives the harsh truth: our parents are no longer the people they once were. Especially as an adult, it feels like our responsibility to help them through their deep pain and sorrow. They are broken too — they have lost part of their own birthed tribe.</p><p>As siblings, we feel the weight and acknowledge the full sense of helplessness. We have to witness this, knowing there is no fixing their broken soul. This can be excruciating.</p><h3>Ten Years On</h3><p>It has been almost ten years since Jacinta’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm. Even writing this seems like I am lying or making it up. The moments of reality hit deep. However, now, they are met with a sense of compassion for myself and my grieving heart.</p><p>How do I do this?</p><h3>Leaning Into Grief</h3><p>Acknowledging that the pain and emotion behind each interaction with loss is safe. It is safe for me to go there. It is safe to be in this. I had to lean into it. I learned that the thought of going to that deep place was actually worse than the moment of it.</p><p>I did this by breathing in and acknowledging.<br />Give yourself the time to be with your own grief.<br />Learn to accommodate it.<br />Notice all the feelings that surge through you. The confusion, the anger, the gutted stomach, the hopelessness, the love, the disconnection, the fear.</p><h3>All Feelings Are Welcome</h3><p>All of these feelings are welcome. They all have a place. One is not worse than the other — they simply are, and they are there to be felt.</p><p>That is when bravery comes in. That is your strength.<br />Notice your courage to feel all of the complications.<br />And breathe. Release. Let yourself go.<br />Remind your inner critic to be kind.<br />Slow down and let yourself feel into the emotions.</p><p>You deserve this space and time to reconnect with yourself.<br />Yes, you are different — but you are different with a strike of lightning now running through your veins.<br />Feel this light, this power, and this burst of energy. It is also yours.<br />It is okay to feel the light and the darkness at the same time. It is all welcome.</p><h3>A Note on Guilt</h3><p>As I write this, I am also highly aware that whilst I have lost three siblings, in this article I only speak to the loss of my sister Jacinta. And with this, I notice the guilt seeping in.</p><p>Does that mean I didn't love my brothers as much?<br />Does that mean their death did not impact me?<br />Why did I choose to write about Jacinta?</p><p>And... I notice these thoughts. I acknowledge them. And I let them go.<br />Life is complicated, and not everything has an answer. Just like grief.</p><p> </p>

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Losing a Sibling: A Lifetime of Grief, Love and Identity

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Condolence Books - Printed and Bound

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Creating a printed hardbound book of online messages of condolence can be a meaningful way to preserve and honour the memories of a loved one.

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Mounted original design prints, inspired by the early Irish Celtic illuminated manuscript, The Book of Kells.

Topic: Sibling Loss