Family transitions, grief and the stories we each carry
Why do family members often remember the same childhood differently? Why can people respond so differently after the death of a parent, while supporting an ageing family member or when clearing a family home?
These questions often arise during times of grief, family transition and major life change. Although families live through many of the same events, they do not necessarily experience them in the same way. Relationships, responsibilities, histories and personal meanings all shape how each person understands what has happened. Over the years, this has led me to wonder whether we sometimes overestimate how much people in the same family actually experience together.
The Same Family
“Were we even brought up in the same family?”
It is a question I have heard in many different forms over the years. Sometimes it follows the death of a parent. Sometimes it arises while supporting an ageing family member, sorting through a family home or trying to understand another person’s response to a major life transition. Whatever the circumstances, the bewilderment is remarkably similar. People are trying to understand how those who grew up in the same family can remember things so differently, want different things or seem to be grieving different losses.
For a long time, I assumed the answer lay somewhere in family history. Perhaps old rivalries had resurfaced. Perhaps grief had magnified differences that had always been there. Sometimes those explanations seemed to fit, but they rarely felt complete. Over time, I found myself becoming less interested in deciding whose version of events was more accurate and more interested in a different question. I began to wonder whether we sometimes overestimate how much people in the same family actually experience together.
Sharing an Event
We often assume that because something happened to everyone in the family, it happened in much the same way to each person. It seems an understandable assumption. We stood in the same room. We attended the same funeral. We sorted through the same house. We can all point to the same moment and say, “We were there.”
Yet being present at the same event is not quite the same as experiencing it in the same way.
One person remembers months spent caring for an ageing parent. Another remembers the frustration of living interstate, wanting to help but feeling powerless. An only child remembers carrying every decision alone. Someone else remembers opening a wardrobe and finding it impossible to decide what should stay and what should go. Each person is describing the same period in time, yet each is telling a different story about what that time meant.
Different Losses
For many people, the death of a parent is about more than the death itself. For one person, it may be the loss of someone they spoke to every day. For another, it may mark the end of years spent caring. Someone else may experience it as the loss of the family home, the person who quietly held everyone together or the final opportunity for a relationship that never became what they had hoped. Although the event is shared, the loss itself may be experienced very differently.
Perhaps what surprises us most is not that people experience these moments differently, but that those differences can feel so difficult to understand. We expect the people who stood beside us to have seen what we saw, felt what we felt and remembered what we remember. When they don’t, we can find ourselves grieving not only the event itself but also the loss of a shared understanding.
The Places We Occupy
Over the years, I have also become interested in the places people occupy within their families. Times of transition often make those places more visible. There is the organiser, the person everyone phones first, the keeper of photographs and family stories, the one who lives nearby, the one who feels left out and the one who has quietly carried responsibilities that few others noticed.
I don’t know whether these places emerge because life has changed or have always existed, only becoming easier to see when families are under pressure.
Living with Different Perspectives
When someone tells me they cannot understand another family member’s response, I no longer find myself wondering who is right. Instead, I wonder what this event has come to mean for each person, what place they occupied in the family before everything changed and whether that place is changing now. I have become less interested in reaching an agreement and more interested in understanding the different experiences that can exist within one family.
I don’t know whether people become more different during times of transition or whether those differences simply become easier to see. I suspect I will continue wondering about that.
Perhaps families do share the same events, but not necessarily the same experience of them.
If This Has Given You Something to Think About
You may have recognised something of your own family in these reflections, or found yourself left with questions that do not have easy answers.
When a family transition, grief, or another significant life change feels difficult to make sense of, counselling can offer space to explore what is happening, what it means for you, and what you may need next.
Learn more about my counselling and psychotherapy services or get in touch if you’d like to arrange an appointment.
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