PAGES OF CHILDHOOD GRIEF

A CHILD’S STORY ROOTS:

I held glimmers of childhood memories—memories filled with sorrow and grief—and some were buried deep enough I can’t always know why I hurt.

Several experiences shaped how I understood grief and loss as a child. These chapters spilled into my adult life and formed a foundation that I desperately attempted to change in my own strength. But I wasn’t strong enough. Or brave.

These childhood encounters formed my story roots. And for the longest time, I didn’t like the place or situations around me.

Like roots of a tree seeking water deep in the ground, I craved a place to hide—to become invisible—where no one could hurt me.

That is, until the day—my turning point—I stepped into the name of Christian and asked God to mold my legacy into a bouquet of hope despite the pain of my youth.

SCENES OF CHILDHOOD GRIEF:

Grief is one of the hardest emotions for children and adults to understand. As adults, we often struggle to find the right words to explain the sorrow that never quite disappears.

As a toddler, I remembered the power of storms—the sound of rain and thunder—and the awe of standing outside while the sky opened above me or tornadoes barreled toward our home on a hillside. Rainstorms fascinated me but also frightened me.

When I was nine or ten years old, a frightening experience of near drowning left me with a profound awareness of the sway of water and storms, both physically and emotionally.

Around that same time, our basement flooded with mud during a torrential downpour. I watched the mud and flow transform my play area into something chaotic. Later, when I lost my grandmother, the loss and grief carried that same feeling of the muddy storm that swept familiar things and people away.

My parents divorced during my junior high school years. My father left home. Like the experience of a death of a parent, I wondered how others made sense of the sadness, rarely talked about my feelings, and carried my own questions into my college years.

Sometimes rain comforted me like kisses from Heaven. But when my mom died during my early twenties, although I knew she would be whole with God, sadness from the loss still lingers even into my sixties.

She grounded our family through the worst of the storms. What could possibly bring comfort in the next chapter of my life?

MY GROUNDED CHOICES CHAPTER:

If I were to share my story, the entire story until today, roots, branches, leaves, and all, I would first interview my great, great, great-great-grandparents on both sides of my family. I would find out who they were, how their beliefs shaped their lives, and how their choices affected my story.

Did any of my family know the sovereign God?

Would my life have been different if they did?

My father traced his family history to England. I remembered him saying we might be distant cousins of the Tiffanys of New York, but no one really knew for sure. My grandfather on my mother’s side came from Sweden, my grandmother from Germany, but our family roots were not as important as our faith roots to me.

Just as plants don’t often get enough water to nourish their leaves, I reached for the sun without being grounded in faith. Without knowing the source of life.

I didn’t understand why I had trouble making friends.

I said things I regretted later.

I sank into the background in theater and onstage as various characters, so I didn’t have to be myself.

The pages of my life also had flashbacks—dreams that brought old memories and scattered images into a setting that didn’t quite match my childhood.

Those things that caused intense grief, I couldn’t talk about because the memories were fuzzy.

But each new chapter propelled me toward a connection with another hurting soul where I found my true story arc of brokenness to redemption.

What about the chapters or scenes of my life that I preferred buried? Missing memories had no place in my legacy or my new life. Those I remembered had no redeeming value.

There was nothing good that could arise except to bathe those places in prayer and wrap angel wings around the memories too painful to recall.

This was the finale of light that mattered the most in my childhood story. My new life produced a second legacy because of God working through my pain.

A NEW LEGACY IN HIS HOLY PLACE:

My childhood legacy didn’t define every page of my life because God intervened in real time and still writes my story today.

When I pushed through the grief to find places where my faith roots could grow deeper, I discovered that sharing the bits and pieces of my pain often brought another person out of their bondage or fear and into God’s story—his holy pages—and I grew stronger and more grounded in my faith.

I stepped into my new name and my new life with His redemptive purpose.

The pages of my life as a Christian begin when I came to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ before my mom died when I was in college. I changed from the extreme introverted tendencies of a confused twenty-some-year-old girl who often felt invisible, into an often extroverted friend of those who needed hope and to be seen.

I didn’t have to hide any longer.

What if we fold those painful pages into special carefully guarded boxes for just the right time when we might comfort someone who needs hope?

What if one of our pages resonates with someone who needs a hand to climb to the other side of the ugliness or brokenness?

There are so many who long to find the light and live in wholeness despite childhood grief.

We don’t have to live in the pages of our past.

We don’t have to struggle to find a different place to grow our roots on our own.

We can ask for help and find encouragement and direction.

THE PAGES OF MY CHILDREN’S BOOK:

My hope is that the pages of this children’s lyrical story book give families and counselors a gentle way to talk about grief, loss, and healing. Because even the heaviest rain eventually gives way to the light from God.

Like the pages of my story prayerfully offer to the child inside each one of us, let’s promise to bring hope to a hurting world in the things we say and the words we write.

My debut picture book, Grief Like Rain, Hope Like Sunshine, includes imagery of storms, raindrops, and sunshine to illustrate difficult emotions. This lyrical walk through rainstorms is a metaphor of a child’s experience with grief and a mother’s love to allow a child to grieve in their own way.

I wanted to be appreciated and valued like so many children do. But I didn’t know how to talk about my experiences. I’m so glad that God allowed me time to grieve and work through those feelings at my own time and place. I’m grateful for His patience with my many questions.

So today, we’ll let the pages of our lives touch the need in another’s story. May we be the one who points another to hope like the sunshine through curtains of clouds after a storm.

May the Lord be your sunshine even in your brokenness.

Meet Patricia…

From her Iowa studio, Patricia Tiffany Morris, an eclectic creative with a geeky tech-affinity, blends poetry, faith & visual storytelling. She threads themes of hope after storms of grief through every genre she writes, including poetry, picture books, and fiction. Her work appears in Guideposts, Lyrical Iowa, EnLivEn Devotionals, NFSPS Prize Poems, and other devotionals and anthologies.

To learn more, visit Patricia’s website or BRRC Author Profile page