Hello beautiful #motherhood community, I hope you all are doing well today and have had a successful week, today for the first time I want to participate in the challenge of the week, I had never participated before and I wanted to do something new in this community hehe. The challenge is called: "how to talk about death with your children", here I tell you how was my experience with my daughter.
My daughter Luna is only 5 years old, I didn't really want to touch this topic yet, but I had to do it or I was forced to do it hahaha when the movie SOUL or soul in Spanish from Disney came out and I knew more or less what the movie was about, so I suspected that Luna would ask questions.
For those who have seen the movie it is about a person trying to fulfill the dream of his life and when he thinks he has achieved it, he accidentally suffers a fall and dies, his soul goes to a place outside the cosmos on the way to a great light. I won't tell the whole movie haha but even there it was enough for Luna to start questioning everything that was going on at that moment.
¿Mamá que es un alma?
¿Hacia dónde va el alma de ellos, esa luz que es?
Automáticamente pensé: Vaya Disney nos puso a trabajar con esta película jejeje
We watched the movie and I was just hoping he wouldn't ask anything really hahaha but it didn't take long until a lot of questions came up: mom what is a soul? Where is their soul going, what is that light? Automatically I thought: Wow Disney put us to work with this movie hehehehe
Even though I knew that questions would come up I didn't prepare much to know how to answer her, but something I do practice in my parenting is to tell the truth according to her age and not impose ideas or religions, I want her to choose who she wants to be as she develops but I leave the knowledge open (according to her age of course) so she can choose and identify with more, so I didn't involve religion in my explanation about death, I was a little generalized and without so many details. In fact, something I liked about the movie is that it doesn't involve religion either, I guess because there are so many religions that it would be a little exclusive to refer to only one and they also tried to be a little generalized.
Amor las personas cuando pasa el tiempo van creciendo y se van poniendo viejitas y ya no pueden caminar más, están muy muy cansadas y entonces se mueren, pero para eso pasan muuuchos años, su cuerpo cierra los ojitos y ya no se mueven más nunca, su alma sale de su cuerpo, el alma es quien eres tú por dentro, el cuerpo se queda en la tierra y el alma va a otro lugar muy muy arriba en el cielo a descansar y a estar con sus otros familiares que murieron también, nos ven desde allá arriba y nos cuidan mucho. Mi abuelita estaba muy muy viejita y entonces se fue a descansar y está allá arriba en cielo cuidándonos, yo a veces la extraño mucho, pero sé que está bien y feliz viéndonos, a veces puede pasar que las personas tengan accidentes muy fuertes o enfermedades muy difíciles de curar y entonces también se van a descansar y así. ¿Entendiste? ¿Seguimos viendo la película? (pregunte enseguida para que no preguntara más nada jajaja)
Ella solo dijo: si entendí mami, me pasas las cotufas, por favor.
Jajajaja.
I literally stopped the movie for a moment to explain, I told her: Love, as time goes by, people grow older and get older and can no longer walk, they are very very tired and then they die but for that many years go by, their body closes its eyes and they never move anymore, their soul leaves their body, the soul is who you are inside, the body stays on earth and the soul goes to another place very high up in heaven to rest and to be with their other relatives who also died, they see us from up there and take care of us a lot. My grandmother was very very old and then she went to rest and she is up there in heaven taking care of us, sometimes I miss her very much, but I know she is well and happy watching us, sometimes it can happen that people have very strong accidents or very difficult to cure diseases and then they also go to rest and so. ¿Did you understand? ¿We continue watching the movie? (I asked immediately so she would not ask anything else hahaha). She just said: yes I understood mommy, pass me the cotufas, please. Hahahaha.
After a few days she started to ask more questions, such as what they do with the body of the person, and began to use the word "died" or "dead" which was surprising because we had not heard it from her, but I guess as she already has a knowledge she begins to use it in her vocabulary. Since Luna was born we haven't had any close losses (please keep it that way), so she is so little that she still doesn't know much about it, but she already knows what it is and more or less what happens when that moment arrives.
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I believe that we should address children with sincerity, always tell them the truth and depending on their age, give them the appropriate information. To children who have suffered very close losses, accompany them in their grief and talk to them a lot, tell them that it is okay if they want to cry, if they are upset, that all feelings are valid to have, it is part of grief, rely on religion if they practice it, although they will surely question why that loved one is gone and their religion did not help them.
Life can be unpredictable, I think that as adults we do not fully understand this painful moment, we just accept it as it is and that's it, but I think we all question why a person who always did good or a person so young with many dreams to fulfill, we can only suffer their loss and eventually accept that she is gone with the hope that someday we will see her again, when it is time to go through a loss all the unanswered questions come to us.
Fuente imagen
The only thing we are sure of is that we will all die at some point, the ideal would be that it would come when we are already quite old and tired, a quiet departure surrounded by your loved ones, but unfortunately it does not always happen that way. On the contrary, our path through this life is not defined, you define it yourself, so let's live as long as we can live, let's do everything we always wanted to do (without hurting anyone) let's enjoy every detail that each day brings us, let's risk even if we lose in the end, because it is better to say that we tried than to ask ourselves all the time that painful question: what if I had done such a thing, let's express love to our loved ones every day.
I did not want to make this post in a sad way even though it is a super delicate subject, I wanted instead to give you a little optimism, my experience was like that without so many complications, but we do not know what may happen later and what we have to face. Happy weekend dear community, I hope you enjoy every moment with your family. Greetings.