Question
What is the difference between loss and grief?
Answer
What is Loss?
It's important to understand what loss is. Loss occurs when something is left behind by choice or by circumstance. That's a purposely broad definition. For many, when you hear something about loss and grief or you take a grief course, you assume that you're going to spend a lot of time on loss due to death. We will spend quite a bit of time there, but I also want to acknowledge that our children, and we as adults, experience loss on many different levels. If you look at that broad definition, it could just be a change in circumstance. It could even be a choice, especially for us as adults. We could make a choice to leave a job, move to a new state, change homes, or something more significant or negative like a divorce situation. Those choices, or what become circumstances for children who are involved in those adult choices, can be considered a loss. When we have a loss, we often grieve. So even though we often think of loss due to death related to grief, we will also talk about grieving related to these other types of losses as well.
We can think of a variety of different losses. I mentioned divorce, but we can also think of things like military deployment, immigration issues where someone is deported, or even things like drug use or mental health concerns, where a parent or caregiver is physically present, but not emotionally present because of the challenges they're experiencing with their drug use or mental health issues. I'm sure you could name a few more as you listen to me talk about the types of losses. You're probably thinking of other things that you've observed children experiencing, or you've experienced yourself.
When we talk about loss, we typically talk about there being a primary loss and then secondary and symbolic losses around that primary loss. For example, if we think of this related to a loss due to death, we would say that the primary loss is the death of a parent for a young child. That young child would experience that significant life-changing loss as the primary loss, but there are also many secondary and symbolic losses that go along with it or result from that primary loss. A child could experience something like having to move or change schools because the death of a parent meant a loss of income for the family, which meant the family couldn't afford the home that they were living in anymore. Maybe they had to move in with relatives or to a smaller apartment somewhere, which means they changed homes and had that loss, and possibly changed schools which was another loss.
Along with the primary and secondary are symbolic losses that aren't so concrete. It might be a loss of a sense of identity. We often see these more symbolic losses with children who are a little bit older because younger children don't always understand this. We know it's still shifting for them. It's something that at some point in their development, from children into young adulthood and adulthood, they will experience some of those kinds of more symbolic changes.
What is Grief?
We've defined loss so now let's think about how we would define grief. Grief simply is the reaction to a loss. Grief varies widely and is not just emotional reaction. Wolfelt (2020) said, “As human beings, whenever our attachments are threatened, harmed, or severed, we grieve. Grief is everything we think and feel inside of us when this happens. We experience shock and disbelief. We worry, which is a form of fear. We become sad and possibly lonely. We get angry. We feel guilty or regretful. The sum total of all our feelings is our grief.”
While the previous quote is very focused on the emotions and feelings after a loss, we know that those reactions can also involve physical, cognitive, spiritual, and behavioral changes. I included this quote because I think it helps us think about attachment and for young children including infants and toddlers, attachment is incredibly important. Think about this in the broad spectrum. Anytime a child feels like their attachment to someone or something is threatened in some way, is harmed, is severed, or has changed significantly, those children could experience some grief reactions.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Loss and Grief in Early Childhood, presented by Tami Micsky, DSW, MSSA, LSW, CT.
