The Forgotten Grievers: Why Losing a Brother or Sister Hurts Differently

A dark ceramic bowl repaired with glowing gold kintsugi seams, resting in warm light on a charcoal table

There is a particular kind of silence that can follow the death of a brother or sister.

People ask how your parents are doing.

They ask how the spouse is holding up.

They ask about the children.

And sometimes, they never ask about you.

You are grieving, too.

But because you are the sibling, you may be expected to stand nearby, help everyone else, answer questions, make arrangements, and stay strong.

You may be treated like part of the support system instead of one of the people who has been shattered.

This is why siblings are often called the “forgotten mourners.”

Their grief is real.

Their grief is often deep.

And their grief is frequently overlooked.

A sibling is more than a family member

A brother or sister may be the person who remembers the house you grew up in.

The family jokes no one else understands.

The arguments.

The holidays.

The secrets.

The losses that happened before either of you had the words to explain them.

Siblings often share the longest relationship of a person’s life.

Parents may be gone one day.

Children grow up and move into lives of their own.

Friends come and go.

But a sibling may have been there from the beginning, carrying pieces of the family story with you.

When that person dies, you are not only losing someone you love.

You may be losing the only other person who remembers certain parts of your life from the inside.

You may be losing the future you assumed would still exist.

The conversations you thought you would have.

The old stories you thought you would tell again.

The ordinary years you assumed were waiting for both of you.

That future is ruptured.

Two childhood photographs and a worn wooden toy arranged in warm light on a dark table, symbolizing shared history and memory

Sibling grief can change your identity

The death of a sibling can make you ask questions you never expected to ask.

Who am I now?

What does it mean to be the oldest?

What does it mean to be the youngest?

What happened to the role I had in my family?

Birth order is not just a number.

For many families, it becomes part of the way people understand themselves.

One sibling is the responsible one.

Another is the peacemaker.

One is the protector.

Another is the funny one.

One is the person who always calls.

When a sibling dies, those roles can shift overnight.

You may become the oldest living child.

You may become the only daughter.

You may become the only son.

You may become the sibling who has to explain the family history to the next generation.

Even if no one says these things out loud, you can feel them changing.

You are mourning your brother or sister.

You are also mourning part of the person you were when they were alive.

Recent work on adult sibling bereavement describes this as a disruption of identity, not simply a painful event that happens outside of you.

The loss enters the way you understand your family, your history, and yourself.

The “strong one” trap

There is another layer that many surviving siblings know too well.

You see your parents hurting.

You see your family falling apart.

You see people who need help.

So you help.

You make the calls.

You sit beside someone else’s hospital bed.

You organize the meal train.

You answer the messages.

You reassure everyone that you are okay.

You tell yourself that your grief can wait.

Sometimes, other people tell you the same thing.

“You need to be strong for your family.”

It may sound loving.

It may even come from people who are hurting, too.

But it can leave a sibling with nowhere to put their own pain.

You can love your parents and still need someone to care for you.

You can understand your family’s grief and still be angry that no one notices yours.

You can show up for everyone else and still be falling apart inside.

These truths can exist together.

An adult mourner seated quietly at the edge of a blurred family gathering, illuminated by soft warm light

The feelings siblings are often afraid to name

Sibling grief does not always look gentle.

It can be complicated.

It can be full of love and resentment, tenderness and rage, relief and guilt.

You may feel guilty because you had an argument before the death.

You may feel guilty because you survived.

You may feel guilty because part of you is relieved that a long period of crisis has ended.

You may feel angry at your sibling.

You may feel angry at your parents.

You may feel angry at the people who keep telling you that time will make everything better.

You may feel invisible when the room centers on someone else’s grief.

You may wonder whether you have the right to grieve as hard as a parent.

You may question whether your relationship was close enough to justify the depth of your pain.

You may feel that your loss has been minimized because you are “only” the brother or sister.

There is no “only” in sibling loss.

Relationships can be close, distant, complicated, estranged, repaired, or unfinished.

We do not grieve only perfect relationships.

Sometimes we grieve what happened.

Sometimes we grieve what never happened.

Sometimes we grieve the chance to make things different.

All of it can hurt.

When grief is already carrying stigma

Sibling loss can become even more isolating when the death involved addiction, overdose, suicide, violence, or another circumstance people do not know how to discuss.

People may look for someone to blame.

They may avoid saying how the person died.

They may use careless words.

They may decide that the death was somehow less tragic because of the circumstances surrounding it.

For the surviving sibling, this can create a second loss.

You lose your brother or sister.

Then you lose the freedom to speak about them openly.

A 2025 study of 77 adults bereaved by a drug-related sibling death found a serious gap between the help people wanted and the help they received.

More than half-55.8 percent, did not receive professional help.

Among those who did not receive help, 76.7 percent said they wanted it.

Those numbers do not tell every story.

But they do show that the need is there.

Sibling grief is associated with increased risks related to mental health, substance use, and mortality, particularly when people are isolated or left without meaningful support.

That does not mean every grieving sibling will experience these outcomes.

It does mean that sibling loss should not be treated as a minor form of bereavement.

Grief does not follow a calendar

The first year may be filled with appointments, paperwork, ceremonies, and people checking in.

Then the messages slow down.

The world begins to expect you to return to normal.

But grief often returns at the moments you most wish your sibling could be there.

A wedding.

A new baby.

A graduation.

A family holiday.

A birthday.

A diagnosis.

A move.

A joke you cannot tell anyone else.

You may reach for your phone before remembering.

You may still think, “I need to tell them this.”

Then the absence arrives again.

The pain may not be as sharp every day.

But the missing person is still missing.

An empty chair beside a warmly set table, with a small gold detail catching the light in a dark room

Why The Forgotten Grievers matters

The Forgotten Grievers: Sibling Loss Is More Than Losing a Brother or Sister is a forthcoming book by TL Everhart.

It matters because surviving siblings need language for what has happened to them.

They need to know that feeling overlooked does not mean they are asking for too much.

They need to know that their grief does not have to compete with a parent’s grief, a spouse’s grief, or a child’s grief.

There is room for all of it.

The book also matters because sibling support needs to be more than symptom-focused.

A sibling may need help with depression or anxiety, but they may also need space to ask:

Who am I now?

How do I live inside this changed family?

How do I carry the memories without being swallowed by them?

How do I talk about my brother or sister when everyone else has stopped saying their name?

Support should recognize the person who died, the sibling who remains, and the family roles that have changed.

It should include age-appropriate care for children and young adults.

It should make room for honest conversations between parents and surviving siblings.

It should offer peer spaces where siblings do not have to explain why the loss matters.

Most of all, it should let siblings be mourners.

Not just helpers.

Not just survivors.

Not just the strong one.

A different kind of repair

The cover art for The Forgotten Grievers uses a kintsugi bowl.

The bowl is dark ceramic.

It has been broken.

The cracks have been repaired with gold.

Kintsugi does not pretend the bowl was never damaged.

It does not erase the breaks.

It does not make the object new again.

It shows that something can be broken and still be held together.

That feels true of sibling grief.

We do not become the people we were before the death.

We carry the fracture.

We learn where it is tender.

We find ways to keep living around it.

Sometimes, slowly and imperfectly, we discover that love remains in the places that hurt.

This post reflects lived experience, research, and educational perspective. It is not medical or mental health treatment, and you never have to share private details to prove that your grief is real. If sibling loss is affecting your safety or your ability to get through the day, consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or a trusted crisis resource in your area.

You are not a secondary mourner.

You are not taking attention away from anyone else.

You are a sibling who lost someone.

That loss deserves to be named.

With care,

Teri L. Busse

Research and further reading