About Us
Hissi Alem is a global adventurer who cherishes the magic of sharing and community-building to transform lives.
Born in the heart of Ethiopia, her early years were painted with the vibrant hues of Havana, Cuba, where her family enjoyed a diplomatic and idyllic lifestyle. But life took a tumultuous turn when her father’s health declined. The family’s quest for a cure led them through various lands, yet destiny had other plans. Her father succumbed to Pulmonary Hypertension at just 36, leaving Hissi—then only 7—on an unexpected journey of grief alongside her heartbroken mother in a foreign land where she didn’t speak the language and had no relatives.
Navigating this new world, Hissi buried her confusion and sorrow, focusing instead on protecting her remaining family—her emotionally fragile mother. Her father’s death marked a profound shift, pushing young Hissi to mature beyond her years. She silenced her own needs, prioritizing her mother’s stability while striving for academic excellence to escape poverty. Being an immigrant child posed its challenges, often placing her in precarious situations due to her mother’s declining mental health.
Yet, resilience became her constant companion. Hissi earned a bachelor’s in international business administration with Honors from the RheinMain Business School in Wiesbaden, Germany. Her adventures took her to the UK, Spain, and eventually the USA, where she secured an MBA from Goizueta Business School, Emory University in Atlanta, GA.
Despite her successes in the corporate world, Hissi grappled with inner turmoil. Multiple family losses rekindled her suppressed grief, especially as her son reached the pivotal age of 7—the age she faced her father’s death. This emotional tempest forced her to confront her buried feelings, reflecting deeply on her life’s purpose, her mother’s struggles, and her cherished father’s legacy. Rejecting loneliness and shame, Hissi embraced her grief. She openly celebrated her father’s memory, speaking his name, lighting candles, and sharing tributes on social media
Driven by a need to connect with others affected by early parental loss and unresolved grief, Hissi birthed this blog. Her heartfelt wish is to create a sanctuary for healing and peace, fostering a community that supports each other through their journeys of grief and growth.
Our Five Truths
The invisible, silent grief- When a child mourns a parent and grows up with grief
As an adult who lost my father at only 7 years of age, I want to share a few discoveries I made along my own journey. I believe the world needs to know about us, adults who as children were often alone and forgotten in their grief.
We never stop loving our dead parent
Every day, I think about Daddy. I have very little memories, and those are precious. I am thankful I had 7 years with my father. I grew up wondering about his illness, his absence, and his love. I know he loved me, and his life was cut short too soon. Many of us, who experienced early parental loss, carry this love with them, deep in their hearts. Just because we don’t have them in our daily lives, don’t speak about our beloved dead parent, and didn’t have the honor to spend our adolescent years guided by their wisdom, love and care, doesn’t mean we do not love them. Yes, we love them just as much as we love our surviving parent, siblings or other relatives. They don’t have to be in this plane with us to be loved. They are in our hearts forever, where love and grief reside together.
Our grief lasts a lifetime
Grief has no age limit. Many successful grown men and women who are removed 5 to 6 decades from the loss of a parent, occasionally cry and long for the guiding hand of their beloved Mommy or Daddy. Our grief comes early in life and stays forever. There is no getting over early parental loss, an unimaginable pain we buried deeply. We are reminded of the loss as we achieve major life events, such as graduation, career highs and losses, childbirth, marriage and divorce. We wonder and dream about how our lives would have been with our dead parent in them. One of the worst moments when grief revisits us and stays longer than usual, is when we become the age we lost our parent. It’s a major moment in which we are reminded of the deepest loss we faced as a child. We question our own mortality and spend time reflecting about the meaning of life. Are we going to die at this same age? Will I face the same fate as Mommy and die in car crash? Will I succumb to the cancer who took my Daddy? These are real questions we face as we mourn this terrible early life loss repeatedly. It is a relentless pain that shakes our core. And many of us will carry this grief to our graves.
The end of our childhood
When my father was buried, I spent many moments in silence, alone. I didn’t know what to say and didn’t know how to feel. My wailing mother was comforted by mourning women around us. I was thrust into the endless crying of adults who didn’t hold my hand, didn’t comfort me, nor explained that this was Daddy’s final resting place. Heck, nobody explained death to me. I felt lots of fear and wanted to be far away. Unfortunately, most of us had similar experiences. Very few had the emotional support we so desperately needed. The focus is often on the surviving parent, and rarely on the children. But children want to talk about the loss. They are curious and have many questions that are left unanswered. A lot of us had deep desires to share how we felt but didn’t have access to the spaces and resources to be held, seen and understood. The silence around our parent’s death was a surefire way to long lasting pain.
The death of our parent shapes the trajectory of our lives
Many surviving children feel that their parent’s death changed their lives in profound ways. There are now a few studies examining the long-term impact of early parental loss. They detail very poor outcomes, as many struggle with school performance, poverty, substance abuse, and serious health issues, such as depression, anxiety as well as cardiovascular issues. Indeed, the death of a parent has devastating consequences on the immune system of a young child that carries trauma in their body. A lot of us had to move to a new location, temporarily stay with other family members, and often adjust to a poorer lifestyle. Instead of support and comfort, we faced more adversity and loss.
Tragically, many of us were placed in the impossible situation of taking care of the surviving parent and siblings, effectively making us “little adults” with no place to mourn or cry. It’s a tragedy like no other and I experienced it first-hand. Upon my father’s death, my mother and I fell into poverty, moved into government housing, and started life from scratch in a new country. My mother fell into deep, chronic depression, and with no other family around, I became her emotional caretaker, therapist and confidant. It was a terrible place to be in and I was always hypervigilant as she slowly but surely developed several mental breakdowns and hospitalizations that left me filled with loneliness, terror and unspoken desperation. Today, I embrace my own depression and provide grace and love to both my little Hissi and adult self.
We were often unsupported and alone in our grief
The day my father died my childhood effectively ended. And that’s the most tragic part of all our stories. The funeral happens, we go home, never speak about death, never express sadness, anger, despair or terror. We swallow it all, and like soldiers with a heavy armor, we carry our profound and unexpressed grief with us for the rest of our lives. We often wonder if we could have done more, to prevent the death of our parent. We place unimaginable burden on our hearts to make sense of the terror. Often, we watch our surviving parent in emotional pain, worry about our sibling’s well-being, and as a consequence exile our own needs and desires. We cannot imagine losing another close family member and relive this excruciating pain, so we will do whatever it takes to keep those we love alive. We become overly responsible as we face a new chapter of life that calls us to question the meaning of life. With the death of our parent, we firsthand experienced how hard life can be, even when most of us couldn’t fully grasp the concept of death.
Sadly, we gained wisdom far too early and at a price too high, because this devastating loss changed and shaped us forever. And it still does today and will tomorrow.
