Dr. Darren Daugherty’s book When God Became ApParent gives an inside look into something that I have never experienced. The death of a parent was one of my biggest fears growing up, and I can’t imagine having to go through it. The eight themes of the book are: a parent’s death as the marker between two lives, living with childhood memories of loss, childhood loss now seen through adult eyes, constant awareness of mortality, absence of the parent throughout the remainder of life, presence of the parent in memory throughout the remainder of life, understanding and defining self, and influence of loss in family living. In the book, the author gives personal reflections from himself and others, who experienced the unexpected and painful loss…show more content… Ask any adult who has experienced a traumatic loss in their childhood or adolescence, and they will usually be able to tell you in painful detail about what they experienced during childhood and what their thoughts were as they lived with that loss. Some of the feelings highlighted in the book were grief, differentness, incompleteness, abandonment, acceptance, and feeling understood and valued. Children who have lost a parent also experienced feeling suppressed and had to learn how to appropriately express their feelings, often looking to others for those cues, receiving special treatment, learning to realize that someone (usually an adopted parental figure or teacher) is available, and family changes in dynamics and responsibilities. Even in my move to Texas, I experienced many of these things, and helping a child through them is paramount to the child’s ability to walk through the grief and loss into having a healthy response toward the loss and other losses that might come their way. Parents, especially if they have lost a spouse, are often going through their own grief that often causes them to shut down the hurting child in order to protect themselves. This forces a child to wander the unfamiliar paths without either tour guide, making them feel ignored, unloved, and hurting all the more. Children should be encouraged, without feeling forced, to express their feelings, and they need to know that they are still in a family, not a shattered, random grouping of hurting people. Families need to remain strong together and learn how to have fun together in order to begin the healing process. The surviving parent also needs tell them the truth about what happened, rather than using euphemisms and other confusing things. These early experiences often shape the young tourist’s journey, and what other people say to these tourists along the