When children experience grief or trauma, their bodies can be flooded with unfamiliar sensations they don’t yet understand. They often feel isolated and different from those around them, without knowing why. Lacking the capacity to interpret these bodily sensations, they instead express them instinctively through behavior and interactions. These behaviors can appear confusing or challenging to others, and their attempts to connect are often misread or misunderstood.
Quantum Healing: How Love, Play, and Observation Transform Grieving Children—and Us
Quantum physics might seem like an unlikely partner in the healing journey of grieving or traumatized children, but its core principles offer profound insights into how we can better support those in pain—especially the youngest among us. One of the key ideas in quantum theory is that observation is not passive. It's a creative act. The moment we observe something, we influence it—and are influenced in return. This is especially true when working with children in grief. When we observe children with unconditional love, we become part of their healing process. That love doesn't just comfort—it actively helps transform their pain into something meaningful.
The Science of Connection
Physicist Niels Bohr introduced the idea of complementarity, inspiring the idea that what we experience is not objective reality but our interaction with it. Later thinkers like Gary Zukav and Arnold Mindell expanded this, noting that reality is not made of things, but of relationships and interactions. When it comes to grief or trauma, this means that how we interact with children shapes their experience of pain—and their ability to heal. The energy of grief and trauma doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It lives in bodies, in behaviors, in silence, and in play. It’s shaped by the context a child is in and the presence of the people around them.
Healing Goes Both Ways
Supporting grieving children is not one-way work. It often awakens our own unhealed pain. A child might behave in a way that triggers something deep within us. One volunteer, after spending time with a child in a support group, became frustrated by how “bossy” the child was during play. But upon reflection, she realized: “I was just like her as a child—and I hated myself for it.” That moment opened a door to her own healing. This is what physicists call entanglement—what Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance.” Our emotions, our energy, are felt by others, especially children. Sometimes, a child will say something that mirrors exactly what we were thinking or feeling. It’s not coincidence—it’s connection. And in that connection, both child and adult are transformed.
The Power of Play
Children have an advantage that many adults have lost: they play. Through imaginative games, art, and storytelling, children give shape to their grief and trauma. They convert emotion into symbolic language—something they can manipulate and make sense of. For adults, transformation often feels laborious. For children, it can feel like a game. But for that to happen, the environment must be safe, loving, and open—free of judgment and full of possibility. That’s where transformation flows naturally. As the Tao teaches: don’t watch the river from the bank. Step into it. Flow along.
Context Shapes Reality
Context matters. The same behavior can be celebrated in one environment and punished in another. For example, a grieving child may struggle at school, where the environment demands order, stillness, and attention. Seeing classmates with their mothers may activate their grief, causing disruptive behavior. They’re not “acting out”—they’re simply experiencing a mismatch between their inner reality and the outer world. In a peer support group, however, that same child may come alive. The context validates their emotional state. They’re free to express, to move, to play. And because the environment matches their experience, they often enter a state of flow—what Dr. Daniel Siegel describes as “being immersed in an activity where the boundaries between self and activity dissolve.” Here, the mind becomes an embodied, relational flow of energy—and grief or trauma begins to heal.
A Call to Presence
You don’t need to be a therapist to help a grieving child. You just need to show up—with love, openness, and a willingness to be changed in the process. When you meet a child in their pain without trying to fix it, you create a space where both of you can grow. Grief is not a problem to solve. It’s an energy to be met, held, and transformed—together.
Reflection Questions: