TEDx Warwick: Happily never after?

Fairytales always have happy endings, don’t they? You would think so. However Dr Shelley Gilbert MBE, after losing both of her parents by the age of 10, didn’t have such a fantastic start.  She is the CEO of Grief Encounter, a child bereavement charity which looks at dealing with the trauma that children face when they lose a parent or become orphaned.

The entire talk was told like a semi-autobiographical children’s story, looking deeply into the psychology of loss. It was definitely unchartered waters for a lot of us in the audience.

“We can’t bring the dead person back, but we can help the journey”.

By and large, the conclusions were that patronising or hiding the truth from children who have experienced such a loss can be detrimental to their development. By trying to be helpful, we are actually harming them by not allowing them to come to terms with what has happened. It creates a reality of fear, confusion and anger.

Gilbert argues that children should be able to talk about what they are feeling and not be challenged as they build up their resilience. As she says with her concluding thoughts, “We can’t bring the dead person back, but we can help the journey”.