Early in 2002, I wrote a university paper on the dynamics of a child born to a woman in mourning – a widow. It was a topic I knew intimately. In 1995, my partner was killed in a vehicular accident when I was six weeks pregnant. Six and a half months later I gave birth to my youngest son. The paper was written for a religious studies degree program course on Death and Dying for one of my favourite professors, Dr. Anne Moore, at the University of Calgary. Being of the Christian faith at that time, the paper was entitled My Daddy’s in Heaven: An Analysis of Death, Afterlife, and Grieving. I have attached the paper to the bottom of this blog post.
Systemic Transgenerational Mourning
Over and over, systemic family constellations reveal situations of unresolved emotional trauma transmitting to the descendants of the family system. This topic ties into my last couple of posts on being Drawn to the Dead. It isn’t only pregnant widows that pass on this unresolved emotional trauma, but it also includes women who have more children after aborting a child; miscarrying a child; delivering a stillborn child; giving away a child to adoption; the foster system, or to other family members to raise; or losing a child to death by accident or illness. Each situation is unique and contextual. The degree of unresolved emotional trauma that passes downward in the family system differs depending on how openly the emotions of grief were expressed or how much they were suppressed.
As I read my old paper, I realized I had a strong understanding of how the greater systemic family works long before my early introduction to family constellations in 2011. I understood the impact of multi-generational interaction on the wellbeing or lack thereof in families. As I read the paper I also noticed my white privilege showing through in many ways. However, it was all part of my own spiritual development and growth, and I accept what is and what was. Exploring all the religious belief systems of the world and writing that paper was part of my healing journey.
Pregnant Women in Mourning
September 11, 2001 (9/11) was raw in the psyche of the world and I felt the pain of the many pregnant women who lost their intimate partners to the attacks on the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and the airliner United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. It didn’t lessen the pain that I was married to a firefighter at the time and so many people in public service to others died that day.
At that time I could find no studies on the socio-psycho-spiritual development of children born to widows. I knew it was a reality all over the world. I knew that wars, conflict, violence, government oppression, accidents, health conditions, and disease left many women around the world with the status of being pregnant widows. This is certainly not a rare occurrence by any stretch of the imagination.
Passing on the Pain
Nine years later, when I began my study of systemic family constellations, I realized I knew the energetic feeling that arises in many constellations. The transgenerational transmission of emotional trauma and family wounds was alive in my own family system. At the time of my partner’s death I innately knew that I didn’t want my child born to a sad, grieving mother. Although I consciously tried to set aside my own grief as much as possible at the time of my partner’s death until after my child was born, I didn’t fully realize that energetically my conscious decisions were overpowered by the programming of my unconscious mind. The sadness and pain transferred to my child whether I wanted it to or not. Is my son a sad depressed child? No, far from it, in fact he has extremely high energy. He is a joy to be around.
The relationship however couldn’t help but be tainted by loss. The psychological development and growth of the child is constantly impacted by loss and emotional pain. The mother tends to want to keep the deceased partner alive for the child, unless there is scandal around the loss and then a silent mystery creates interest for the child. In this process the child receives the regular programming from the mother in early childhood, however the child also receives a sense of something missing. The identity of the child is developed around the grief of others in the family system. The child energetically and unconsciously feels the grief of the others. Without experiencing the loss themselves the child is nurtured with loss in the environment. This is epigenetic transference of emotional trauma or pain. While in childhood, the emotional component of this loss is suppressed in many situations. What happens when the birth of a child is tainted by the death of his or her father? How was my son impacted by my mourning?
Commemorative Child
A commemorative child is often named after someone in the family system that died. I named my son after his deceased father. That is frequently the easiest way to detect an energetic entanglement of being drawn to the dead. The mother tends to fear losing this child because she has already lost the child’s father. She energetically holds onto the developing child within her womb much too tightly for fear of having something go wrong with her pregnancy and having to suffer another loss. Her emotional wellbeing is interconnected with the birth of this child. She has suffered a heavy fate – the loss of her intimate partner. She feels this child as the only remaining tie to her deceased partner. With that tight grip around the child’s little body energetically, the child may find it difficult to take in life fully. When a child is born to a mother who is emotionally needy in any way, the child senses this need and sacrifices themselves out of unconscious love and loyalty for the greater good of the family system. The child energetically responds, “I will share this burden or loss with you mother.”
Taking in Life Fully
The child may not be able to breathe in the oxygen that is their natural birth-right. The child may develop various lung conditions like asthma in childhood, a tangible message that healing in the family system is needed. The child may develop any number of conditions or symptoms throughout childhood. In some situations, the symptom is a message to the woman and her family system that she needs to let the child separate or individuate from her in a healthy energetic way. By the age of three or four, it is natural for the child to want to go out further and further away from their mother exploring the world around them. The child needs to develop his or her own energetic boundary in life. When the child stays in mother’s boundary the child will struggle in life in some way or other as he or she grows older or transitions into adulthood. The future wellbeing of the child will follow the emotional healing work done by the mother and her greater family system. In my own healing journey, I experienced a family constellation that showed a beautiful family dynamic that I had never experienced in the physical realm. It allowed me to let go of the chaos and pain that surrounded my partner’s death.
In combination energetically, the child may also be drawn to the dead partner. By going back to my last two posts, you will gain an understanding of how the child is drawn to the dead and what can be done to end this energetic entanglement.
If you are interested in reading my paper from 2002, I have included it in its entirety without any adaptation. Remember it was written for a course in religious studies.
My Daddy’s in Heaven: An Analysis of Death, Afterlife, and Grieving
By Patricia Robertson (2002)
The birth of a child is usually a monumental event met with great excitement and anticipation, but it can be a bittersweet moment for a widow. When the father of the child predeceases the birth, the baby can often spend many months in the womb of a mother in mourning. The woman will often think about her unborn child as a bright light in an otherwise bleak situation. Depending on how the mother copes with her grief and stress dictates the effect the mourning and grief will have on the baby. In many instances, the mother unintentionally puts off her mourning period until she safely delivers her newborn. When the woman finally allows herself to grieve for her deceased spouse, the depth of her unhappiness can lead to countless issues for the newborn child and any existing children.
Although it can create stress for the whole family, it can also demonstrate a healthy way to deal with grief, which is a natural part of life that all children will eventually need to come to grips with at one time or another. From pets dying, to grandparents or family friends, learning how to manage grief in a beneficial manner is highly essential. In early childhood, stress resulting from grief can manifest itself in a number of ways from behavioural issues, learning disabilities, to depression and fear. Although the occurrence of widows delivering infants is comparatively frequent, this circumstance can happen in huge numbers in countries where AIDS takes a toll on society, in situations like war, or where terrorist attacks occur similar to the one on September 11, 2001 in New York City. When women have lost their husbands while pregnant, the child is often seen as a special gift linking them to the dead spouse.
Difficult as it is to believe, having read or flipped through twenty books on grief or grieving geared towards children, there was no information to be found on the grief of children whose fathers died before their births. This situation could be compared to an extremely young infant losing a parent to death. Having completed several internet searches on the topic, very little direct information could be found. For the most part, nearly all sites available were chat sites for widows to discuss their concerns and problems. As a result, the thoughts and analysis included in this essay are subjective in nature having been taken from personal experience of death and grieving from the viewpoint of Christian Protestantism. Research must exist on this topic, but it appears to be inaccessible to individuals through public bookstores or libraries.
Growing up with a daddy in heaven is not to be mistaken for Our Father in heaven. Children raised in western religions learn very early in life that God is in heaven and he is called Our Father. Children realize quickly that concrete differences separate them from others, as they socialize and discuss their identities through their family relationships. Not having both a mommy and a daddy can occur due to death, single parenthood or divorce and it occurs much more frequently in today’s society.
The question at this point is whether children actually grieve the missing parent. Grief is usually defined as the loss of something special to us. It usually follows a rupture in a relationship, but a child born to a widow falls into a different scenario. Appreciating that they are without a dad, but never having made the acquaintance of the man, these children understand that they will never have the opportunity to build a tangible relationship with their deceased parent. Is it possible to grieve for someone you have never met?
From the time these children are born, the mother talks to them about their deceased father and in the eyes of these children this individual does exist in some capacity. In most circumstances and depending on the situation surrounding the death, the majority of widows would not permit the life story of their dead spouse to be forgotten. Continuity and connection are important aspects of human socialization and these children need to build a relationship with their deceased parent. Depending on the religious background of the family, the child may have a view of the parent in heaven or as a reborn soul in a new body. Children are taught that their body is a combination of mommy and daddy’s bodies, and subsequently, the realization that a part of daddy lives on in them is a perfectly acceptable concept, for they might look like their father or exhibit many of his mannerisms. The principle of transcendence after death is exhibited and demonstrated in this common belief referred to as ancestral transcendence. A part of the deceased person lives on through his progeny.
Ritual becomes an important aspect of the relationship the child forms with the deceased parent. Children are very physical and tangible in their thoughts and actions. Being able to touch something or visualize an article helps these children form a connection to their daddy in heaven. Children can become attached to articles or objects that belonged to their father. It is universal for widows to want to honour the lives of their late husbands in order that their premature death was not in vain. Lives can be celebrated in hundreds of ways including arranging memorial funds, perhaps setting up scholarship funds, designing the gravestone to be elaborate and personal, or something as simple as providing the newborn children with a box of keepsakes as a tangible memory of their father.
The newborn child is often named after the deceased parent if it is a boy or when possible the name can also be given to a girl. Children can remember their parent when they say their prayers and they might suggest an annual ritual to commemorate the anniversary of the death. Another excellent way to venerate the deceased is through a memory painting where objects that were important to the couple or the individual are memorialized in artwork for everlasting enjoyment. These various modes of commemoration provide cultural transcendence for the deceased man. Most widows go to extraordinary lengths to make sure their deceased spouse is remembered by any existing children and by the newborn child. Under some circumstances, the spouse’s death may be tainted by scandal, creating a situation where the woman would rather forget the deceased and generates no discussion of the father with the child. This situation will likely produce added mystery around the death and the child will eventually crave information.
Whether the father had an important role in some area of society or not, his colleagues and friends may decide to celebrate his life in some manner such as annual events. This carries on the person’s identity into death through cognitive continuity. People who didn’t know the deceased when he died are made aware of his accomplishments and his life story. Witnessing the annual event, year after year, the child develops a feeling of pride from his association with the deceased. Whether the parent died in an acceptable or unacceptable fashion will significantly influence how these children perceive their parent. Developing a good feeling about ones parent’s death is healthy for the child’s sociological and psychological development as they mature.
In many families, the daddies in heaven may be pictured as angels or guardian angels looking down over the children making sure they are safe. Whatever the religion, widows may also tell their children that their daddy is present in something like a bird, or other such tangible being, that sits on a perch outside their kitchen window keeping an eye on them and watching out for them.
In western religions, there is a belief in final judgement at death followed by resurrection of the soul immediately or at some future date and a journey to heaven to be with God. The individual lives their afterlife in heaven amongst all the other resurrected souls. Heaven is often thought to be a paradise where angels live, watching out for those back on earth. A common belief is that individuals will once again meet up with their loved ones in heaven after they die. This is a hopeful way to view death and afterlife as opposed to those individuals who don’t believe in afterlife at all. Our human psyche longs for hope and continuity and the belief in afterlife is soothing and comforting to accept, rather than, the idea that death is final – there is no more. Although heaven is an abstract phenomenon to a child, it is comforting to know that a deceased parent is in this paradise and that they may have an opportunity to meet someday.
Let us digress for a moment and consider how children from different eastern religions would respond if born to a widow. In eastern religions, widows are likely to tell the child that their daddy has had a good rebirth because he was an exceptional man. Eastern religions believe the deceased shakes off the old body at death and then goes through rebirth of the soul into a new human body or any other life form depending on the karma collected from the last life. The continuity of this belief would be comforting to children who have lost their fathers before birth. There is the belief that with death comes new life and a new baby is born taking on the soul of a recently deceased person. Life, through forensic continuity, is a continuum where you try to live a noble, worthy life to collect good karma and break the cycle of rebirth.
Reincarnation is the vehicle of survival for eastern religions and to someone from a western perspective it doesn’t seem quite as comforting as heaven implies. If all life is misery as Buddhist doctrine states, a young child may not perceive this as a glorious state of being. The rebirth could occur in any living organism depending on the karma at the time of death and the individual who is reborn must continue to learn unfinished lessons in the next life in order to achieve liberation or enlightenment. The children’s deceased parents would merely be reborn back into more misery unless they were extremely exceptional individuals who may have achieved liberation or enlightenment. Daoists believe that life and death are both decent conditions and that there is one process of coming and going. A young child trying to come to terms with a parent’s death would be encouraged to live in harmony with the Dao, not to interfere or change the Dao, but to adapt to the Dao. They believe that everything returns to the Dao (the source of all things) in order to nourish and renew something else. This could follow the thought that with death comes new life as believed in Buddhism.
Hinduism, on the other hand, has the four stages of life where it is usually in old age that one steps away from earning a living for the family and spends the rest of ones life preparing for death. A younger man dying prematurely would not have the necessary knowledge to achieve liberation, so the expectation would be that he would continue the cycle of rebirth. Since this sequence of birth and death is not considered satisfactory, young children would not be particularly comforted knowing their parent is again reborn. In the countries where eastern religions are most widespread, death would be a part of routine life as people often live within multigenerational households, where witnessing the elderly die is commonplace. A child would most likely be taught that life goes on and death shouldn’t cause a great rupture in the workings of the community.
Even if there is longing for the deceased parent, children of widows are usually forced to accept that their daddy is biologically dead. With western religions, there is no body, only a gravestone to mark the ashes or coffin. This location may play an important part in the rituals surrounding the relationship with the dead. Depending on the proximity of the grave, the family may visit frequently or any chance that time permits. This ritual is important to a child’s acceptance of death as a part of daily life and it also provides a tangible ritual within which the child can participate by taking flowers to the gravesite. There may be other relatives buried in the same cemetery to show the cycle of life and death as a continuum.
Along with biological death, the deceased has also entered sociological death in his relationship with his family. He is no longer able to function in the role of father or husband and the physical separation of the soul from those on earth emphasizes his sociological death. Young children may seem totally unaffected by the death of their father, but one day, out of the blue; they might start asking endless, repetitive questions about a great variety of issues. Children aren’t always looking for deep, elaborate answers and something quite simple might suffice. Seemingly out of nowhere, children might also begin to play act their father’s occupation, whether he was a doctor, a firefighter, a policeman, or a veterinarian. This can create another connection to the deceased parent. It is good to encourage this sort of play, as long as it is not excessive, since the child will emerge healthier as a result of it. To discourage any activity is to create greater interest in it, for any mystery craves a solution. Watching young children develop their interests can often be puzzling as genetics may play a greater role in establishing interests than environmental exposure or nurturing. Researchers are continually conducting experiments to determine whether nature or nurture is the most influential in the development of a child. This topic is likely to be explored by the interest of the in-laws and other relatives of the widow’s child. Everyone will want to know the child’s interests and strengths in order to compare them to those of the deceased.
For children without fathers, it is often quite obvious that the child gravitates to men in social circumstances. Without even realizing they are doing it, the need for male interaction is met by seeking out attention from grandfathers, uncles, or family friends. Although the child may function on a daily basis with little evidence of grief, the time will come when other children will force the child to feel the loss of the parent. Questions are asked like “Where is your daddy?” or “How come you don’t have a daddy?” or another could be “How come your daddy is dead?” For some children, this conversation might be simple to answer, but for others, it might stir up deep feelings of loss. Another factor that comes into play is whether the widow has become involved in a new relationship and provides a male role model for the child. If the widow’s new beau is acceptable to the child, he should be warned to expect that children are prone to ask whether he can be their new daddy. When a woman remarries an acceptable man in the eyes of the child, the child will likely differentiate between “my daddy” and “my daddy in heaven.” The ability to say they have a daddy is empowering to children, as they enjoy fitting in with their friends or classmates. Adults may find it difficult to watch the child’s affections transfer from the deceased parent to the living man. When children have the opportunity to have a new daddy, showing their natural affections is a very healthy step. The new daddy is tangible as opposed to being abstract and it is natural for the child to yearn for a strong relationship with the daddy living in the here and now on earth. Daddy in heaven still exists, and always will, but a place in their heart has to be made for the new daddy.
If there are other children in the household, the widow and the newborn will be less likely to openly dwell on the death, as the workings of a family will keep everyone focused on a routine. A difficult situation arises for a child with a deceased parent if there are siblings from a previous marriage that do have a daddy they visit. The young child may cling to this father figure when he picks up the other children, or the child may feel alienation or jealousy. Children are likely to try forming some sort of bond with this other dad even though he is unrelated to them. Any social child would be inclined to seek the attention of yet another male. To a great extent, the child’s reaction to a situation is a reflection of how the mother responds to stress, grief, and how she handles relationships. Most children are extremely resilient and adapt to changes in their surroundings quite readily as long as they receive ample love and understanding. A child with a deceased parent has an advantage, in some way, over the many adopted children who go through life craving contact with their biological parents. With a deceased parent, the craving isn’t usually as strong unless the widow and perhaps the only child dwell on the deceased.
Widowhood creates a new relationship with the in-laws and the manner in which this relationship is maintained will definitely affect the young child’s knowledge of half his relatives. Children benefit when a relationship is nurtured with their father’s family. This provides another social network for the child and the success of this relationship will help children solidify their identity and their sense of belonging. This other family may have interests or occupations that the child seems to genetically gravitate towards, besides, a child can never have too many people loving and caring for them. It is the subjective truths and ideas you learn and live by that help you form your meaning or purpose in life.
Religion can play a huge role in the life of children who have never known their father as a result of death. Organized religion is a way of bringing individuals together in congregations or communities to assist the greater community in which they exist. The church community often does a great job with individuals who are physically or mentally in need and can play an important part networking with the grieving family. These wonderful people will often go out of their way to do everything from cooking meals to holding baby showers. There are many opportunities to memorialize the dead within the church setting and a child will likely suggest many memorials over the years. There may be a hymnal requiring a memorial at the front or an Easter lily requiring dedication. These rituals allow children to express the loss that they feel and doing something special for their deceased parent permits them to show their love.
Children don’t always show their grief with sadness and loneliness. They can be quite optimistic in their ideas and never really show their loss in the way adults would expect. Adults have to realize that young children grieve very differently and through the tangible articles and rituals in the home they may totally be comfortable with their situation. If a new father figure comes into their life the grieving process may never manifest itself the way adults picture that it should. Children know their father’s absence yet they accept that they only know their father through stories and pictures. At a later time in life, these individuals might have a greater desire to learn more about their biological fathers. It is a different situation from that of adopted children where they crave information about their biological parents. The information about the deceased parent is usually readily available and as a result, no mystery exists. When children come from families that openly discuss the deceased parent they are less likely to have strong urges to “meet” this parent as most of the questions have been answered at one time or another.
Individuals may suddenly find themselves at a time in their life when the need to know more about their deceased parent arises. They look in the mirror one day and realize they look like the pictures of their father, which can lead to an interest in the father’s life and family. Another instance when family history seems important is when children are born. People like to learn medical histories of their deceased parents and latch onto the roots from which they came. Children born to widows definitely fall into a classification of their own and they do grieve the loss of their deceased parent in their own way. This grief may not follow the usual definition of the word, but children need tangible rituals in their life to assist them in accepting the death and to come away mentally healthy and well adjusted in their sense of identity.
