NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LINKS A MAGAZINE FOR TEENS WHO HAVE SUFFERED PARENTAL LOSS

If you would have to choose an alternate lifetime of living in any form except for a human being, how many of you would choose to be a rock?

Crazy, you are thinking. “Who would want to be a rock? Maybe an animal, like a horse or cheetah or bird; maybe a tree, its branches laden with fruit and it's reaching upwards to the sky. But a rock? It's the most boring existence ever!”

Any of you read William Steig's gorgeous children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble? The main character is this donkey who finds a magic pebble, and through some serendipitous events, finds himself turned into a rock (I won't ruin the rest of the story for you, because even if it's a children's book, anybody—especially a teenager—can get a huge kick out of the story!). Suffice to say, Sylvester was not thrilled to be a rock. And neither would you, I would assume and presume.

I imagine the reason none of us would particularly enjoy being a rock is because a rock just sits there. It does nothing. It never changes. And nothing could be more dull or mind-numbing than years and years of sameness—of no change.

Anybody disagrees with me? Anybody fancies the idea of being a rock? A lumpy, bumpy, gray, boring rock that just sits there forever and doesn't change not one bit?

Then why, when you are a breathing, living person, do you hate change so much that the way you run from it, you may as well curl up and turn into a lumpy, bumpy, boring rock that doesn't move or grow not one bit?

By any slight chance you notice that you react to even the smallest change with such opposition, that sometimes you really wish you were a rock so you didn't need to feel the pain of that change, or deal with that change not one eensiest bit?

Hey, by any remote chance your parent died a long or short while ago?

That's it, you know. Teens that have lost a parent often have difficulty coping with change, no matter how small—and especially the big one—in ways that other teens who have not experienced parental loss do not.

Seems unfair, no? That on top of losing your mother or father you also have to learn that loss has made another thing more difficult for you—coping with change.

I wish I can spend this article sympathizing with you. I wish. I really do. Because you have enough to deal with. But I have strict orders to use this article to help you understand why parental loss has made change harder for you and how you can cope with changes even so. And that's an important thing for you to learn about, because as far as I know, rocks are not anybody's favorite friend. And nobody marries a rock. And rocks don't go on to have jobs or kids. And rocks are real boring. 'Cause seriously, I don't know if you have noticed, but rocks never change!

Change may be a challenge for any person, but for a person whose parent has died, change, no matter how small, can seem insurmountable.

I am talking about the big changes like entering high school, a new class or new grade, a move to a new home or community, or a parent's remarriage. I am talking about even the small changes like a haircut, a substitute teacher, or trying out new foods.

Here's why this happens:

(I used to be a teacher so I love explaining things. If I get boring in the next paragraph or so, you can just skip over them and read the part of how you can help yourself. I won't get insulted because I won't even know—unless you write me an email how boring this article was. And then I will respond to your email and let you know that I am glad at least that you got out of rock-mode long enough to care...)

Every stage in life is a stepping stone to the next. And each stage in life has its own set of jobs that must be tackled in order for a person to grow successfully. So it's going to sound weird, but a baby's job is to learn to trust people. The baby needs to learn to trust that she's going to get food, a diaper change, and love whenever she needs it. And guess whose job is it to teach the baby this important job? The mother.

Of course an older sister can teach this to the baby. Or a grandmother or special babysitter. But I am sorry to say that nobody can teach this to a baby as well as a mother. So if a mother dies young and doesn't get to teach this to her baby, the baby may not learn this trust very well. And then when the baby grows bigger, she doesn't quite trust people. And it's hard to deal with changes when you don't trust anybody can really be there for you while those changes happen. Like that hair will ever grow in normally and you won't look like a freak for all of high school. Or that you will make friends in your new class or block. Or, the big changes like allowing new people in your life—friends, mentors, or even a new mother.

And because fathers are really important, if a father disappears in a baby's early life, a different type of trust may not be learned. The type of trust that fathers are good at giving. You know that kind (or maybe you don't); the my-father-can-protect-me-against-bad-and-scary-monsters-that-hide-under-my-bed-at-night. And it's hard to go to sleep-overs, or adjust to changes like a new teacher, a new type of food, or new school when there isn't that image of a father whom you can trust to be there for you.

The good news is that this job of trust, even if it wasn't learned perfectly, can be developed over time, with different people. A grandmother, a special teacher, an uncle, a rav, or therapist. So don't get all depressed about it. I'm just explaining how your fear of change can be rooted in trust you couldn't learn when you were supposed to. And the same is true of all the rest of the jobs you are going to read about now. A person can learn these jobs without a parent, although it will be harder. Or she may need to learn the job a little better when she's older, even if she technically passed the age where the job was supposed to be learned. It's never too late, actually.

When a person is one to three years old, the job they must learn is to be independent. Think Terrible Two's. Again, it's the role of the parents to help a toddler achieve mastery of their toilet training, get dressed by-myself, and figure out how the food gets from the spoon into the mouth and not nose, hair, or eyes. When a parent is missing, some stuff may get lost in the learning. So, again, you may find yourself uneasy with change because you don't feel on solid ground, you don't feel you can do things by yourself successfully.

Between the ages of about three to five, the job is learning to take initiative. Initiative is about bravely trying out new things. Check out the preschool classroom and you will know what I mean. It's about taking initiative with coloring, and cutting. Experimenting with clay and pencils and games with friends. It's about leading others in follow-the-leader, or hiding well in hide-and-seek.

It's about parents who encourage children to experiment and applaud their efforts to try new things. It's kind of sad when a parent isn't there to give that child that boost, so the kid doesn't really feel confident or secure enough to do those things. They will only want to color a picture and not make their own original one; they will be too shy to play with other kids in their classroom because it's scary to take the initiative to create change in their lives without the support of that missing parent.

A six to an eleven year old must learn industry. To be successful in their lives as school children. To do homework and take tests. To make friends and participate in games and activities with others. If a parent is missing in the home, it's hard for that homework to get done—or to be recognized. It's hard to make friends if everyone knows each other from the bungalow colony or shul and you feel different. It's hard to participate in games if you never learned how to play them to begin with. At the time when a child should be embracing and practicing new things and getting good at them, a missing parent makes it hard to do what comes naturally to others. And even if these things are eventually learned, like making friends and playing jumprope and doing homework, it doesn't come effortlessly and with confidence—paving the way for insecurities later on for subsequent changes both big and small.

A teenager, anywhere from twelve to twenty (in some cases), has a really important job. To find her own identity. It's a time when teenagers need to separate from their parents in order to become adults. It's a time when a teenager needs to figure out what she really thinks about life, about herself, about her religious and moral values and how they are the same or different than her parent's. Or seem different than her parent's. And eventually rediscovering and returning to the values of her home as an adult. It's this crazy time between adult and child, but not yet adult and not a child anymore. It's about making really close friends and spending lots of time with them, learning to be close to other people other than her family in preparation for learning to have an even more important relationship later on, in marriage.

But when a parent dies, this teenage time gets all mixed up.

A girl, instead of separating from her parent and family, often becomes too enmeshed with them, taking care of her siblings and surviving parent out of guilt and obligation. She doesn't reach out to friends because they don't understand her. She doesn't try out new things, explore her talents, and take part in extra curricular activities because she is needed, or thinks she is needed at home.

She may not have a chance to figure out who she is and what she thinks about things or argue with her parent about his or her values or beliefs because that parent has died and left her stranded in middle of her teenage job of finding her identity. Even worse, if the parent died smack in middle of her teenage years, she is left with unresolved guilt and unfinished business of her teenage years when she was a total obnoxious creep. Like some therapist said, “To be normal during adolescence is by itself not normal.”

It's a mess.

How can she embrace change, when her life is so chaotic, with all the physiological, emotional, and psychological changes that naturally come along with being a teenager, and she feels she has no anchor to keep her ship from floating away?

I will tell you a secret.

Many people suffer similarly when their parents have not died, but have disappeared from their child's life through divorce, mental illness, neglect, or inability to connect to their child. I am sorry if your surviving parent has compounded your difficulties by being an absent parent in some other way.

I am sorry if this is a very serious article, but it's pretty serious business when a person misses out on learning the tasks of any particular age, even if they were able to learn the other tasks okay, because a parent has died.

Now that you have read this stuff, I am sure you are kind of surprised how some things apply to you. And you are pretty stunned at how well I have described some developmental stuff that you realize you missed or might have stumbled through. And now it makes more sense why a break up with a friend, getting a pimple, going to a new high school, or getting new shoes—normal changes and occurrences—seem always so much more terrible to you than to other people you know.

It may be you are missing trust, autonomy, initiative, or an identity.

But now that you know, you can do things to accomplish those tasks so that you can adjust to changes successfully and move on with your life.

Begin to trust people. Choose a mentor, a teacher to talk to, be brave and confide in friends.

Take charge of your life, do things you enjoy, be independent in ways you have not dared before. Take the initiative to experiment with new things, explore your talents, make new friends. Learn who you are. Form your identity by asking questions, learning, questioning, trying out new ideas.

And of course, no article would be complete without the next line. Repeat together with me:

If you can't do it alone, see a therapist!!!

Coming to think of it, when I was in second grade, we created a rock garden and colorful stuff grew out of the rocks. So if you have been a boring rock until now, can you learn to grow colorful stuff?

My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online