Listening Beyond Loss
What one clinician's migration journey has taught her about accompanying grieving children and families.
Reflections by Corina Garcia-Reyes
When my colleague first invited me to write about migratory grief, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to say.
Instead, I found myself sitting with questions I hadn’t revisited in a long time.
I moved from Guatemala to the United States when I was 27. My story is one of choice and opportunity. I also know that my experience does not reflect the journeys of so many people who have had to leave everything behind to survive.
Yet even knowing that, I couldn’t ignore the grief that came with leaving home.
Migration changed more than my address. It changed my relationship with family, language, traditions, and even my sense of identity. I left behind people I love, familiar places, and the version of myself that had always known exactly where I belonged. Over time, I came to understand that grief doesn’t always arrive through death. Sometimes it arrives through change, distance, and the quiet realization that life has moved forward in two places at once.
For me, migratory grief has been an ongoing process of letting go, holding on, and discovering what “home” means now.
Working at The Children’s Room has deepened that understanding in ways I never expected.
Every child and teen who comes through our doors is grieving the death of someone important in their life. That loss is profound, and every story is different. Some of the families I work with have also experienced migration, language barriers, or separation from relatives and communities they love. Others have lived in the same town their entire lives. Their circumstances are different, but each child arrives carrying a story that deserves to be heard with care.
What my own migration taught me was never that these experiences are the same.
It taught me something much simpler.
Grief changes how we see ourselves. It changes our sense of belonging. It asks us to build a life around an absence while continuing to carry love forward.
The children, teens, and families I’ve had the privilege of supporting have shown me extraordinary courage. I’ve watched young people speak openly about parents, siblings, and caregivers who died. I’ve watched them laugh together moments after sharing something incredibly painful. I’ve seen them discover that they are not the only child carrying a loss that feels impossible to explain to their classmates or friends.
Again and again, they remind me that moving forward with grief isn’t about leaving someone behind.
It’s about finding ways to carry them with us.
That idea feels familiar to me.
When people migrate, they often carry pieces of home with them—recipes, music, language, traditions, photographs, and stories. Some recreate those traditions in a new place. Others slowly blend old customs with new ones. Home begins to expand rather than disappear.
I’ve come to see something similar in the children and families at The Children’s Room.
They continue celebrating birthdays. They cook favorite meals. They tell stories. They laugh about funny memories. They find ways to keep talking about the people who died because love doesn’t end with death.
Those traditions look different from family to family, but they all answer the same quiet question:
How do I keep carrying the person I love?
Perhaps that’s what both migration and grief have taught me.
Not that every loss is the same, but that every loss reshapes us. It asks us to discover who we are now while honoring who—and what—we continue to carry with us.
Working at The Children’s Room has reminded me that every child’s grief deserves to be met with curiosity instead of assumptions, compassion instead of comparison.
Every story is different.
Every loss is different.
And every child deserves a place where all of those parts of themselves are welcome.
About This Series: 30 Years, 30 Stories is an ongoing collection of reflections from the community that has shaped The Children’s Room over the past three decades. For 30 years, all of our services have been offered free of charge to grieving children, teens, and families thanks to the generosity of our community. Learn more or support our work at childrensroom.org.