The Bonds We Build:Love, Loss, and The Heart of Child Life
Written for Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Monthly Newsletter
February 2025 | Volume 16 - Number 2
February is often painted in pink and red, wrapped in candy hearts and messages of love. But for those of us in child life, love looks different. It is in the quiet moments—kneeling beside a child’s hospital bed, tracing tiny fingers with an IV line, or offering choices when so much has already been taken away. It is in the trust built over time, in the way a child reaches for your hand before a procedure, or in the deep breath a parent takes when they see you walk through the door, knowing they are not alone.
Child life is built on connection. We do not just meet children in the hospital; we walk beside them. We celebrate their victories—first steps after surgery, a clear scan, or a long-awaited discharge, and we bear witness to their struggles—pain, fear, exhaustion, and the weight of uncertainty.
I am reminded of Elana, a four-year-old girl diagnosed with a large tumor just weeks after the pandemic began. She was admitted to the hospital with her father, while her pregnant mother, unable to be by her side, waited anxiously at home. Elana’s dad was devastated—alone, overwhelmed, and trying to manage countless questions and decisions without his wife beside him.
I spent days with Elana in her room and the playroom, giving her as much choice and control as possible. She played through procedures and pokes, finding ways to cope even as the world around her shifted. Then, one day, I noticed her hair started to mat from days in the hospital. Gently, I asked her father if I could brush and style it. Through tears, he agreed—feeling, in that moment, the full weight of his daughter’s mother not being there.
It is in these quiet, overwhelming moments that child life specialists see beyond the obvious. We step in not just for medical preparation, but for the small, deeply human needs that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The bonds I create with patients are both a privilege and a heartache. You don’t just know a child’s diagnosis; you know their favorite stuffed animal, the way they like their port accessed, and how to make them laugh on their hardest days. I have sat with their parents during seemingly endless hospital stays, helped siblings understand the impossible, and learned to read between the lines of exhaustion and hope.
And then, sometimes, I have to say goodbye.
No matter how much I prepare, no matter how many times I have been there before, loss never gets easier. There is no way to hold space for so much love without feeling the grief that comes when it is gone. Child life teaches us how to help children and families cope, but there is an unspoken, “on-the-job” lesson in coping with loss that does not always make sense. How to walk into a room that used to be filled with laughter and find it empty. How to carry the weight of a goodbye that came too soon.
But if love is what makes loss so heavy, it is also what makes this work worth it. The bonds we build, the trust we earn, and the moments we share—they matter. They bring comfort in the hardest times. They remind families that they are not alone, and long after a child is gone, the love remains.
So this February, while the world talks about love in chocolates and flowers, I think about the kind of love that does not fit into a card. The love that sits beside a hospital bed. The love that holds a parent’s hand. The love that stays, even after goodbye.
