Surviving Sibling Loss: The Forgotten Grievers and Disenfranchised Grief

“Am I entitled to feel this much? Was this relationship important enough? Am I important enough?”

We often hear that grief is individual, that everyone grieves differently and we should allow people to grieve in their own way.
But we don’t grieve in a vacuum.
We are shaped by our families, our communities, our culture, our religion, our politics and the wider world around us. These things quietly teach us what is acceptable, what is normal, and what we need to do to belong.
Grief is shaped by these messages too.
There are often unspoken ideas about who is allowed to grieve, what grief should look like and how long it should last. Some relationships are seen as less legitimate than others, such as ex-spouses or lovers. Some losses are considered less significant such as miscarriage or beloved pets. Some deaths are met with compassion, while others carry judgement or stigma such as death by drugs or suicide.
When this happens, there can be a secondary loss: not only the loss of the person, but the loss of having our right to grieve and to have our grief recognised and supported. This is what we mean by disenfranchised grief, and sibling grief can be disenfranchised in ways that are easy to miss.
Surviving siblings are sometimes called forgotten grievers. They lose someone who may have been their earliest companion: the witness to their childhood, the keeper of shared memories, family stories, private jokes and secret codes. Yet all too often, the world expects them to set their own grief aside and be the strong one.

When the sibling becomes the supporter

When a sibling dies, there can be an immediate sense that other people’s grief comes first. A parent has lost their child. A partner has lost the person they shared their life with. A child has lost their parent.
And the sibling?
They may quietly become the supporter rather than the mourner.
“My parents have lost their child. Who am I to say how much this has affected me?”
“They need me to be strong.”
“Other people have lost more than I have.”
For a child, this message can be even more explicit:
“Be a good boy or girl. Look after your parents. They need you to be strong.”
The surviving sibling may become the one checking on everyone else, helping with practical things or just trying not to add to the burden. They are grieving too but may not feel like the person who is allowed to have needs.

When we compare grief

They could also begin to compare their grief with everyone else’s wondering where they are on the ladder or if they deserve to be on it at all. Who has lost the most? Whose relationship was closest? Whose pain should come first? Witnessing the devastation of their parents, or the grief of a partner or child, they may decide that their own pain is somehow less important.
“I shouldn’t be making this about myself.”
“I should be coping better and not burden them further.”
But grief doesn’t work like that.
The death of someone we love doesn’t become less painful because someone else is suffering too. There doesn’t have to be one person whose grief matters most.

When people assume siblings weren’t that close

There can also be an assumption that siblings aren’t necessarily very close, particularly as adults. They may live in different places, have different friends and families, and not speak every day. But none of that tells us what the relationship meant.
A sibling can be someone who has known you since before you knew yourself. They may be one of the few people who knew what it was like to be you in that particular family, at that particular time, a signpost that allows us to both grow and stay anchored. From our siblings we often learn competition, loyalty, friendship, conflict, rivalry and support that stretches across a lifetime.
Not speaking every day does not mean loving someone less.

When the relationship was complicated

And sometimes the relationship really was complicated. There may have been rivalry, arguments, estrangement, things left unsaid or things we wish we had done differently.
“We weren’t close.”
“We hadn’t spoken for months.”
A complicated relationship doesn’t mean there is no grief. Sometimes we grieve the relationship we had, sometimes we grieve the one we wished we had and sometimes we grieve the possibility that one day things might have been different.
And now that possibility has died too.

When the whole family changes

Losing a sibling can also change where you belong within your family. You may suddenly become the eldest, the middle child, or the only remaining child. You may feel responsible for carrying memories, stories or traditions forward, or even for living the life your sibling never got to live.
For children, this can be especially difficult. Parents may become intensely protective, afraid of losing another child, or may place new expectations on the surviving child to achieve more or live differently. Alternatively, they may be so overwhelmed by their own grief that they struggle to be fully present. This is sometimes complicated by a conspiracy of silence.
The surviving sibling can be left trying to understand a family that feels strange and unfamiliar.

When you disenfranchise your own grief

Perhaps the hardest part comes when all these messages become internal, taking on your own voice.
Nobody actually says, ‘your grief doesn’t matter.’ Instead, you start saying it to yourself and slowly other people’s expectations become your own. This is one of the reasons sibling grief can become so invisible. Everyone knows the person has died. The funeral happens, people talk about the one who has gone, and yet the sibling who remains may still feel that their own grief has been pushed to the edges.
They may not even recognise everything they are grieving:
The loss of their sibling.
The loss of the family they knew.
The loss of their place within that family.
The loss of the person who had and would have witnessed the length of their life.
The loss of all the things that can never now be said or repaired.
Perhaps what a surviving sibling needs most is not to have their grief measured against anyone else’s, not to be told that someone else has lost more, but simply to have someone say:
You lost someone too.
This happened to you too.
Your grief matters too.
Because sometimes the death may be visible, but the right to grieve may not be.

References:
Davidson, D. (2018) ‘Sibling loss – disenfranchised grief and forgotten mourners.’ Cruse Bereavement Care. 37 (3)
DeVita-Raeburn, E. (2004) The Empty Room. Understanding sibling loss. New York: Scribner

Doka, K. de los Angeles, M. Davies, E. (2026) The Grief Series: When Grief doesn’t get a funeral. [Podcast]12 March

Fujita, A. et al (2025) ‘A Systematic Review of Grief Experiences of Children Who Have Lost a Sibling.’ Journal of Palliative Medicine 28 (12) 1669-1685

Resources:
Sibling Support UK: https://www.siblingsupport.co.uk/
Child Bereavement UK: https://www.childbereavementuk.org/
The Compassionate Friends: https://www.tcf.org.uk/ftb-siblings/
Cruse Bereavement Support: https://www.cruse.org.uk/

Dr Deborah Lee Miller
Person Centred Pluralistic Counsellor
Profile Page: https://thiscuriouslife.co.uk/practitioner/deborah-lee-miller/

Julia Kaye
Humanistic Counsellor and Coach
Profile Page: https://thiscuriouslife.co.uk/practitioner/julia-kaye/