Losing Both Parents: Nadja on Grief, Family, and Grief Support

Interview

What it’s like to keep living without the people who brought you into the world, and how grief counseling can offer grounding.

I had the privilege of accompanying Nadja, who is grieving both of her parents. Her mother died on October 9, 2010, and her father on February 1, 2024.

In this very personal and honest interview, she shares why she chose grief counseling with me, what our work together gave her, and how she experienced this path.

I feel deeply honored to have accompanied her through such an intense time, and I’m grateful she’s sharing her thoughts to show what grief counseling can mean. Maybe you’ll recognize a little of yourself in her words.

In this interview: What it means to lose both parents · Why Nadja sought support · How grief counseling helps · Is my grief “bad enough”? · How grief changes · Children and grief · Nadja’s advice · What her story shows

What It Means to Lose Both Parents

When both parents have died, more changes than daily life. Many people describe suddenly feeling like “the oldest generation.” The family home as an anchor is gone, and with it the people who knew you from the very beginning. Often the second loss comes years after the first and reopens the old grief. That’s exactly what Nadja experienced.

Losing Both Parents: Why Nadja Sought Support

Theres: Why Did You Seek Support?

Nadja: I looked for support about six months after my father died, because I often felt paralyzed inside. I went to work and tried to take care of my family, but several times a week I’d be completely stopped in my tracks for hours. I’d just lie on the couch, lethargic, often in tears, unable to do anything. My husband listened and took as much off my plate as he could, and my friends made time for me as often as possible, with enormous understanding and always an open ear. But in everyday life, my feelings still overwhelmed me. A friend eventually suggested I look for grief counseling.

I also felt I couldn’t give my older son, who is 9, the support he needed in his grief for his grandparents, the way I wanted to. That was another important reason for me to seek help.

How Grief Counseling Helps After a Parent Dies

Theres: How Did Grief Counseling Help You?

Nadja: Just the step of looking for grief counseling brought me relief. I think it had to do with the sense of empowerment it created: I felt less at the mercy of my feelings, and instead I saw a promising way to get my feelings and the situation “under control.”

Our sessions set a lot in motion inside me. After the first one, it felt like everything rigid in me, everything stuck, which had felt like sediment that kept building up, started flowing again, started moving. Honestly, I felt that after every conversation with you. After the first session in particular, I had this image (I think I once wrote it to you): I came to grief counseling carrying a very heavy backpack, and there I could set it down for a while, rearrange what was inside with your help, and then carry on with more strength. The heavy load didn’t feel quite as uncomfortable anymore, even though of course it was still there.

In counseling, I could talk about the things weighing on me, and I was given concrete strategies for dealing with them.

Together we also figured out what I could do in daily life so I’d stop feeling so powerless.

What I also loved was that you really took my specific situation into account. As a mother of two fairly young children, I’m pretty stretched in everyday life. Some things just aren’t doable with limited time. You always showed me options that were realistic, so I could actually use the ideas.

You also had concrete suggestions for my son, for how we could handle his grief together. Those suggestions helped enormously and brought him relief, and me too.

Losing Both Parents: Nadja’s Situation Before Counseling

Theres: What Was Your Situation When You Found Me?

Nadja: As I said, about six months after my father died, I decided to look for grief counseling. I was 45 at the time, married, and my two sons were 9 and 6. I worked 35 hours a week and was very busy with work and family.

I mentioned that my husband and my friends were there for me and willing to listen, but one difficulty was that I didn’t really know what to say. There was just this enormous grief, this dark cloud that stopped me, paralyzed me, and weighed me down. My father had pancreatic cancer, and the diagnosis came very suddenly. His condition declined incredibly fast after the diagnosis. My brother and I did most of the caregiving. It was hugely challenging, emotionally and practically, and it felt like an extreme downhill roller coaster ride. Three months after the diagnosis, my father died. After his death, I kept thinking about that last period, so much was going through my head. On top of that came the longing for my father, and still for my mother too. We were very close, and the fact that these beloved people are no longer here was and is terrible for me.

My father-in-law also died in spring 2024, so the theme of impermanence played a big role for me, along with being confronted very directly with how precious life is. How do you spend your life meaningfully, so that at the end you can let go in peace? That question still occupies me intensely. Of course it was always there, but my parents’ deaths pushed it to the forefront. It became more urgent and created much more pressure.

I can list these individual topics now, but before counseling I couldn’t have separated them this clearly. It was all one big knot of thoughts swelling inside me, getting heavier and heavier, and I couldn’t untangle it on my own.

I also wanted to be there for my children, and I felt I couldn’t do it enough. Again and again, I reached a point where I felt helpless and didn’t know how to go on.

All of that together really weighed me down and made me feel unable to act. I was often angry too, and I was too impatient with my kids or my husband, because I wasn’t at peace with myself and was trying to push the grief down.

Is My Grief “Bad Enough” for Grief Counseling?

Theres: What Finally Made You Take This Step?

Nadja: I’d often thought about looking for grief counseling or a grief group. But I hesitated, because I thought what had happened was simply the natural course of things. For me personally it was terrible and sad, but objectively it seemed completely ordinary. There are so many tragic fates, and in comparison, what happened to me wasn’t “bad” enough, I thought.

When I met up with a friend, she asked me once again whether I’d like to find grief counseling. She has also lost several close and dear people, and she believes every grieving person should have access to grief counseling, because death is so existential and life-changing for those left behind, and can knock you down so hard, that you should have a professional by your side.

In the end, that conversation led me to start looking. I found it hard to find someone. It has so much to do with trust. Since I was listening to a lot of grief podcasts at the time, I came across an interview with you. I felt a connection right away. The way you are and the things you said touched me deeply. I looked up where you offer counseling and was so happy to see that you live in Berlin. So I gathered my courage and wrote to you right away.

What also stood out to me was that you had a formative experience with grief as a child. That mattered to me because of my son. I could tell you’d be able to empathize with and understand how a child feels in a situation like this. And I had a strong sense that you don’t judge anything, that you understand every kind of grief, so that I’d be in good hands with my story, even though it’s “just” the “natural course of things.”

What Grief Counseling Is Like: The Beginning and What Changes

The First Session: Trust and Practical Tools

Theres: What Was the Beginning of Counseling Like for You?

Nadja: I was pretty nervous before our first session, but at the same time I had no doubt I’d be in good hands with you. I was nervous (and in a way I still am before our sessions) because facing grief is also uncomfortable. You step out of your comfort zone. Allowing feelings, crying, facing grief: I don’t always find it easy. So there was a bit of nervousness, because now things might get real.

The sense of trust I already had before our first conversation grew very quickly during it. Your words confirmed so beautifully that I was safe with you and that we were talking completely as equals. That made me feel at ease with you right away. You gave me the feeling that we were now going to tackle this agonizing thing, the grief, together. That felt really good, as if you were taking my hand and leading me through it. It was a huge relief and took so much pressure off.

I found it incredibly helpful that you gave me concrete methods (EFT tapping, writing) I could use, both when grief hit me suddenly and as a daily practice to integrate my different feelings. Through that, I experienced, learned, and above all internalized that I’m able to act and not powerless.

Last but not least, one conversation in which we came across a key moment from my childhood was very eye-opening. It set a lot in motion inside me and ultimately made me stronger.

How Grief for Her Parents Changed

Theres: How Did Your Grief Change During Counseling?

Nadja: Our conversations made me even more aware that positive and negative things almost always exist at the same time. I was able to shift my focus back to the positive, to gratitude, and I no longer felt so ruled by the negative. My spirituality also grew stronger and strengthened me, because through it I feel more connected to my parents.

My grief has somehow become more familiar. Since starting counseling, it hasn’t completely stopped me or paralyzed me anymore. “Untangling” it helped me enormously to stop feeling helpless and powerless.

Writing has become an absolute gain for me. I notice it does me a lot of good, and there’s still so much I want to try with it.

The coming months could be hard, because it’s now the anniversary of my father’s diagnosis and the terrible time of his illness, his birthday is coming up, and then the holidays. The light, the air, the November mood, all of it triggers me somehow and often makes me melancholy. But I know I can talk to you and make an appointment anytime, and that gives me strong inner support.

Something else that has changed, because it’s grown even stronger, is the urgent feeling that I want to spend my life meaningfully and not waste it, so that at the end I have no regrets. Right now, that pressure almost feels too strong. On the other hand, that’s exactly what makes you face things and actually take action.

Children and Grief: When Grandparents Die

Theres: How Did This Affect Your Family?

Nadja: It was very good for us as a family that I did grief counseling. Since then, I’ve been more balanced and more centered again. We still talk a lot about my parents, we remember them together. My son’s evening ritual, which I started with him through counseling (every evening he writes a short letter to Grandma and Grandpa and tells them about his day), is now something my younger son wants to do too. He draws a picture every evening. With my husband, I share my thoughts and what’s on my mind.

Overall, our family feels more at ease. We’re all sad again and again, but we try to transform or channel the grief through rituals and activities: visiting the cemetery together, painting stones for the grave, collecting pretty pinecones or shells for the grave.

I hope my children see and internalize that in a crisis you don’t have to see yourself as helpless, as tossed around by life, but that you can try to actively steer against it and that you can seek help. I hope allowing feelings will be natural for them.

My work environment benefits from grief counseling too. Since I started, my nerves are clearly stronger again. Stressful situations don’t throw me off as quickly, and I’m more stable overall.

What Grief Counseling Gives You Beyond the Hardest Time

Theres: What Has Grief Counseling Given You Beyond the Intense Period of Grief?

Nadja: The positive experience of empowerment I had through grief counseling certainly helps me in life in general. But I may still be too close to it to answer this question well right now.

As I said, I’ve discovered writing as a resource.

Grief counseling has helped me bear the ambivalence of life. I had fantastic parents, and conversations with friends keep reminding me of that. For a while, I thought that was just how it is. I didn’t know anything else. Over time I’ve realized that many people don’t have such a good relationship with their parents. I’m incredibly grateful to have had parents like mine (and in a way, I still do 😊), and I can feel the deep basic trust and strength my parents gave me. At the same time, I miss them endlessly, and it hurts so much not to have them directly with me anymore, on this side. So life has given me so much, and yet the goodbye hurts all the more, and the gap and silence it leaves behind is all the bigger. Bearing that is hard for me, and grief counseling has helped me with it.

Nadja’s Advice for Others Who Are Grieving

Family, Friends, and Professional Support: Several Sources of Strength

Theres: What Would You Tell Other Grieving People?

Nadja: I can only recommend getting grief counseling.

After my mother died, my father was devastated, and after a lot of encouragement he found a psychologist who supported him. Those sessions gave him a lot of stability and supported him in a way that my brother and I, as his children, and also his friends simply couldn’t.

I think the ideal in a situation like this is having several sources of support: family where you feel safe, friends who are there for you and try to catch you, a good amount of self-care, and ideally someone who works with grief professionally, an expert, so to speak, who can offer a completely different kind of support than your own family or friends.

I should have gotten grief counseling much earlier, after my mom died. I think it would have helped in so many painful moments and phases.

What Makes Good Grief Counseling

Theres: What Was Especially Valuable About Our Work Together?

Nadja: The complete trust I felt right away, your deep attentiveness, your warmth, and your incredibly loving way with people: I found it, and still find it, amazing. You don’t often find that with people. It creates such a sense of comfort. Especially in grief, when you’re so vulnerable and raw and you’re turning your innermost self outward, those qualities help you open up and show yourself.

You kept letting me know that I could turn to you, that I could write to you and tell you when something heavy was on my heart. That helped me a lot too, because it took away my worry about being a burden.

I found the atmosphere of our conversations simply wonderful. The sessions were very intense for me. I got so many ideas that kept me thinking long after our talks. I was definitely able to accept my grief and work with it, to untangle it. The atmosphere and the space couldn’t have been better.

What Nadja’s Story Shows About Losing Both Parents

1. No loss has to be “bad enough.” Nadja hesitated for a long time because her parents’ deaths seemed like “the natural course of things.” But grief doesn’t need to justify itself to deserve support.

2. Children grieve in bursts and need rituals. A letter to Grandma and Grandpa every evening, a drawing, painted stones for the grave: small, steady rituals make grief tangible for children.

3. Concrete tools restore a sense of agency. Writing, tapping techniques, a plan for hard days: the feeling of being at the mercy of grief turns back into the feeling of being able to do something.

Grief rarely follows a fixed pattern. It changes over time, sometimes quieter, sometimes louder. I explain why in Stages of Grief: The 5 Stages and Why Grief Isn’t Linear. How long grief is allowed to last is covered in How Long Does Grief Last?

You’ll find more about the psychological effects of losing a mother in Losing Your Mother: Psychological Effects and What Helps. Nadja mentions that many people don’t have a good relationship with their parents. What grief feels like then is something I describe in Grieving a Mother or Father After a Difficult Relationship. How Margarita experienced her mom’s death, she shares in her interview.

Do you know these feelings too? Who are you grieving? Have you had experience with grief counseling, and what helped you? If not: what’s still holding you back from giving yourself this space?

Frequently Asked Questions About Losing Your Parents

How long does it take to process the death of one or both parents?

There’s no fixed timeline. Some people experience intense grief for months, others for years. Old feelings can resurface especially around anniversaries, birthdays, or holidays. That’s normal and not a sign that grieving “didn’t work.”

What is EFT tapping, and how can it help with grief?

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is a method that involves gently tapping specific points on the body, with the aim of regulating difficult emotions like anxiety, anger, or grief. Some people find it a helpful addition for getting through intense feelings in the moment. It doesn’t replace deeper grief support.

How can I help my child cope with the death of their grandparents?

Children often grieve differently from adults, in shorter, more intense moments rather than continuously. Small, steady rituals like a letter or a drawing for the person who died can help make feelings tangible without overwhelming the child.

Is my grief “bad enough” to seek professional support?

Yes. Grief doesn’t have to follow a particularly dramatic loss to deserve support. Comparing yourself to seemingly “worse” situations doesn’t make your own grief any less valid.

Can grief counseling help even if the loss was years ago?

Yes, absolutely. Grief has no expiration date, and even years after a loss, counseling can help you sort through feelings that never had space before.

Grieving your mother, your father, or both? Online grief counseling can help, whether the loss was last month or years ago. In our grief group for losing a mother or father, you’ll meet people who understand what you’re going through.

Theres Kirisits is a certified grief counselor and the founder of t.rau*raum. She offers online grief counseling and grief groups in English or German, including on weekends and holidays, with a first session available within 48 hours. She also leads workshops on grief in the workplace. About Theres