Dear Dr. Dora,
I am the single mother of a 16 year old girl who seems well adjusted. She does well in school and has a lot of friends.
Her father died when she was eight. Everything was a struggle. I was an attorney in a large law firm at the time. I started my own firm close to home, to be more available to her. I never remarried, or dated—she’s been my priority.
She seems fine. But I wonder if her father’s death might be affecting her. Should she be in therapy, just in case?
Concerned Single Mom
Dear Single,
Healing from the loss of a loved one is a challenging process. Psychotherapy is one way. But people have been healing for thousands of years, before psychotherapy was invented in the 1800’s.
Your love and attention to your daughter has been most important. Thanks to you, she had a caring, intelligent mother, who prioritized her. Your religion, if you have one, can also be important toward healing. A few sessions with a good therapist for your daughter to process her feelings, would not hurt. But I think about Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking, written after her husband and daughter both died the same year. It’s basically a critique of western psychiatry and psychology, and how little therapy offered her, in terms of grieving death.
I am also concerned for you? How are you doing?
Psychologist Judith Wallerstein has followed a co-hort of children for over thirty years, after their parents divorced. Her most significant finding, actually, has to do with the consequences of single parenting. When these children reached their twenties, they had trouble forming their own relationships. Dr. Wallerstein speculated that they lacked a model of a relationship, compared to children who grew up observing two parents each day. Wallerstein’s work has been critiqued, and there are plenty of children of divorced parents who have healthy, long-term marriages.
In any case, your daughter is 16, and will soon be dating, if she isn’t already.
Is it time also, for you to form a new relationship?
With Lots of Heart to You,
Dr. Dora