‘Didn’t want to go outside’: What childhood grief is really like

Emma Muir-Woodley (from left), Nora Zilmer and Charlotte Layzell have all experienced the loss of a loved one at a young age. Photos / Emma Muir-Woodley, Jenny Zilmer, Charlotte Layzell
Here, four Kiwis share their experiences of losing a loved one at a young age.
Jenny Zilmer’s daughter Lumi was born in Estonia with a rare and severe heart defect. Before she could be flown to Starship hospital in New Zealand for treatment, she died at just 3 months old.
Zilmer and her husband Mikhel, who is originally from Estonia, decided to move back to New Zealand along with their older daughter Nora as they came to terms with their loss.
“The medical treatment [in Estonia] was not up to par, so there was a lot of trauma around that,” Zilmer tells the Herald.
“There were so many questions, so many what ifs, a lot of blame, a lot of guilt … as you’re going through all of that early grief, you also realise that you’re dealing with something that society is not equipped to deal with.”
Nora was almost 4 years old when her little sister died.
“It was a huge upheaval to lose her sister and move to a new country,” her mum says.
“As a parent, all your focus goes into your surviving child or children, and for us that’s the case – we were just focusing on keeping everything as stable for her as we could.”
The Zilmers “wanted to be as honest as possible” with their daughter about what had happened.
“She’s very, very switched on and there’s no getting things past her. And so we just found the words that felt right for us at the time. We explained what death is, in as real terms as we could. She knew from day one that her sister had died, her heart stopped working.”
But they noticed that Nora was struggling to process the “big feelings” around her sister’s death.
“She was having to hear a lot of very adult conversations and hearing us struggle with our feelings – how would you expect a child to be able to deal with feelings when you can’t as adults?”
Soon after arriving back in Aotearoa, Zilmer heard of the charity Kenzie’s Gift, which offers funded therapy for grieving children and young people.
She decided to sign Nora up and says it has made a “huge difference” for her daughter.
“We were very concerned as parents that Nora was carrying all this trauma and didn’t have the tools to help her with it. It was like a weight off our shoulders, because someone else is helping you with that burden of questions, like, ‘Is my child okay? Am I doing enough for them?’ and to have someone come in and take that off for you, that’s amazing.
“Nora came back very settled, very emotionally regulated, and she seems to be building some tools for managing the big emotions when they come up.”
Student Bronte Murney, 20, was just 14 when her dad was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2019. A year later, he died following complications after a routine surgery.
“After that, we went straight into lockdown – the timing was pretty awful,” she recalls.
“It was really hard for all of us and it was hard for us to make connections with each other because we were all going through the process differently. On my first day back at school, I cried and had to get Mum to come pick me up,” she tells the Herald.
When Murney started university last year, her childhood grief “really caught up with me”, she says. “I was having a really hard time connecting socially with people, I was losing friends and just having a really hard time overall.”
The previous year, she’d started having panic attacks. “In uni, it got really bad and I just didn’t want to go outside. I eventually told Mum and she put me on to Kenzie’s Gift.”
Through the charity, Murney connected with a child psychologist, who she was reluctant to see at first.
“But then some of my friends actually came and said, ‘Look, you’re actually not fine’ … so I went and it was really good.
“If I never went, I probably would have never talked to anyone about it because I felt bad about putting all the pressure on my friends to help me through this.
“Until you go through something like that, you’ve got no idea how it feels – but just knowing there were other people out there going through the same thing as me, it was really comforting and you feel like you’re less alone.”
Science student Charlotte Layzell, 20, lost her mum last year.
“It was very sudden, it was an accidental death … I’d seen her the day beforehand and then the next day I got a call that she’d passed away and my whole life was different,” she tells the Herald.
She found out about Kenzie’s Gift through social media, and initially “wasn’t too sure” about signing up.
“Getting a new therapist and having to retell the story many times, it’s such a mission … but I got in touch and I eventually was paired up with my therapist. I still see her. And I think it’s just really good to have someone who’s had a bit of experience with grief.”
When a childhood friend, Emma Muir-Woodley, lost her own father to suicide earlier this year, Layzell reached out.
“I passed on some resources from Kenzie’s Gift, because obviously no one really knows what to say, but I just thought in my situation when my mum passed away, I think having those resources really would have helped if I’d known about them,” she reflects.
Muir-Woodley, who was 21 when her father died, signed up with Kenzie’s Gift and was connected with a therapist after a month on a waiting list.
“Suicide is not something you can really talk about with people a lot, it’s a very taboo subject – it’s not something many people can relate to, so it was really helpful going to a professional, something I wouldn’t be able to afford out of my own pocket,” she tells the Herald.
Layzell jokes that Muir-Woodley started “dragging me along” to the gym, where they both found an outlet for what they’d been through – and they decided to take part in a winter swim challenge to help fundraise for Kenzie’s Gift.
“It was a nice way to be able to talk about it in a positive way and start the conversation, do something meaningful and give back,” Layzell says.
“There’s definitely a big culture in New Zealand of trying to process on your own and not ask for help, but when you’re going through something like that, community and connections based on positive things really does make a big difference and get you through really tough times.
“If you can make it a community thing and make routines after grief, you can really start to appreciate life again … there is hope.”
Muir-Woodley adds, “Because we have both been on waiting lists to get funded therapy we were like, ‘What if other people didn’t have to wait as long? What if we could give back?’
“Mental health support in New Zealand is very underfunded. It’s not something that’s accessible to a lot of people who need it. Even if it’s just one area of mental health, making it more accessible to young Kiwis would be great. Nobody chooses to lose a loved one. And when you’re a child, when you’re really young, you don’t have the tools to navigate that.”
Clinical psychologist Dr Freyja Mann works as a triage practitioner for Kenzie’s Gift, connecting young people or their parents to therapists.
She explains that grief can display differently in children than in adults.
“You might see separation anxiety, regressions in behaviour … expectations of seeing the loved one who’s died, because they don’t necessarily have that understanding of death and the permanence of it,” she tells the Herald.
“The little ones might be wanting more help with you feeding them or not being as mobile as they used to be, seeking that reassurance and care and nurturing – checking, ‘Am I still okay? Are you still with me? Are you still looking after me?’ and then the bigger behaviours like irritability and anger and frustration and those kinds of outbursts as well, where we don’t have those kind of emotional regulation skills developed yet at that age.”
How do you explain the concept of death to a young child? Mann says it’s important to be clear about what’s happened.
“It’s important that you give a complete story, but it doesn’t need to be detailed unless your little one is asking. They’re going to be getting older and asking more questions. That’s when you can start to fill in those gaps.”
Avoid using phrases like “passed away”, “gone to sleep”, or “we have lost someone” as they can be confusing or scary for children.
“We may lose things accidentally, and usually something is lost temporarily and we find it again at a later time. For example, saying we have ‘lost’ our pet is ambiguous – are they lost or have they died? Those are very different outcomes.”
Mann explains that grief is not a linear process.
“What does fully processed grief look like? Once someone’s died, they’ve always died. And you’re always going to have those reminders, those anniversaries, those Mother’s Days and Father’s Days … it’s going to stay with you, and it just looks different over time.”
How can you support a grieving child?
“Checking in, making sure that they can ask questions, making sure that you’re aware of how they’re doing and when to get a bit more help if you’re really concerned, if things are very unusual and if you’re worried about risk,” Mann says.
Parents can help validate their children’s grief through modelling – showing them that it’s okay to express their feelings.
“Trying to temper it slightly so that it’s not overwhelming the child, but still expressing that in a way that feels manageable. If we never express that to our children, then they think that we’ve just moved on [and that] they’re the only ones still feeling angry and distressed,” Mann says.
“That’s really important that we show them that grief doesn’t go away.”
Kenzie’s Gift was founded by Nic Russell, herself a cancer survivor whose daughter Kenzie died of cancer at the age of 3 in 2005.
The charity offers resources, support and up to 12 funded sessions with a qualified therapist to young people aged 3-24 who have lost a parent or primary caregiver, or have a loved one who has been diagnosed with a terminal or serious long-term illness.
As a charity, they rely on donations to operate. For more information or to donate, you can visit their website here.