She is 11. This week, her mom will testify before Congress about her father’s death and what their lives have been like since. After the hearing, Sophia will speak at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol about grief and her experience as a military child survivor.

Most weeks, her concerns are much smaller: football drills, cheer practices that run late, homework open on the kitchen table past her bedtime. Her cleats are by the door, grass caught in the tread. Nothing about that suggests she’s headed for Capitol Hill, yet this week, her world will shift into a different gear.

Grief doesn’t show up with a schedule. It slips into everyday life. When I asked Sophia to help me better understand how parents can identify the cues their child is giving them, and how we could know the difference between what grief looks like versus what a bad day or bad mood looks like, she answered, “You can tell, just look at their face.”

Sophia says, “Kids show their emotions on their faces more than anything.”

She explained it as a blank stare that zones out a little too long. Hands that won’t stay still. Fists pressed tightly in their pockets or underneath a desk. Adults often miss it. Not because they don’t care, but because they expect grief to be obvious. They expect it to mirror theirs.

We Know How to Fold a Flag. The Years After Are Harder.

Our country understands ceremony. It knows how to stand for a moment of silence. What it doesn’t always know how to do is sit with what follows, especially when the person carrying the loss is a child.

Sophia is a military child survivor. When she talks about losing her father, she doesn’t describe a single defining scene. She talks about the quiet that followed.

“Before TAPS, I felt completely alone.”

She is referring to the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), which provides peer-based grief support, Good Grief Camps, online programs, and highly-recommended resources for grieving military families.

At Good Grief Camp, she says, “Everyone there has been through something similar. You don’t feel alone.”

There are arts and crafts tables. Time to talk. Time not to. This place does not require children to appear unbreakable, strong, or resilient for the sake of adult comfort. Anita Davis Sullivan remembers their first large TAPS event as disorienting.

“I didn’t think I belonged,” she says.

Standing towards the back of the room, Anita was internalizing all the reasons she was disqualifying herself from the support she was seeking. Within minutes, she met another mother who felt the same. She overheard her saying to herself, “Oh, I don’t belong here,” as if she were about to make a fast exit. But Anita turned to her to say, “Me neither!” That conversation built on what Anita calls “very real and vulnerable feelings,” and became a friendship that has steadied her ever since they met, seven years ago.

The healing that campers find at Good Grief Camp stretches far beyond connection and friendship; even further than life-long friendship. The biggest key takeaway for survivors who attend is the realization that they can feel more than one thing at the same time. Grief didn’t shrink. It just wasn’t that loud anymore, it wasn’t at the forefront of their minds. That is a powerful tool for anyone healing to add to their toolbelt.

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“Stop Hiding Your Feelings.”

When asked what she wishes adults understood, Sophia answers without hesitation.

“I wish grown-ups would learn how to help their children cope. And stop hiding their own feelings.”

She repeats it.

“Expressing grief is necessary. Holding it in is unhealthy.”

Sophia’s own experience with grief as a military child survivor has given her wisdom far beyond her 11 years. Adults often see emotional composure as maturity and strength. Children sometimes experience grief as an absence, as if something is actually missing in the room.

“What surprised me most,” Anita says, “is how differently grief shows up for children compared to adults.”

Adults look for visible collapse. Children signal something smaller, a shift in expression, attention drifting mid-sentence, fingers twisting fabric until the knuckles pale.

“They might not say anything,” Sophia says. “But you can see it if you slow down long enough.”

Thousands of surviving military children cope with this invisible, internal version of grief. While most of them will never stand at a microphone to share their experience and explain it to others, their needs are real, and their wounds are extremely visible to them.

For anyone spending time with a child struggling with grief, a listening adult can make a world of difference in the empty space they can feel. Many times, kids do want to talk, but they just don’t know how to approach it, or the vulnerability feels so uncomfortable that they continuously talk themselves out of it. Sometimes showing up just to listen is more than enough.

What Actually Helps Grieving Military Families

On the hardest days, Sophia says she doesn’t pretend. She talks to her school counselor. She leans on her best friends. She turns to her siblings. She talks to her mom. She practices breathing exercises.

“Breathing helps. And sometimes you just need fresh air.”

It’s not complicated. It’s reliable and repeatable.

Anita’s approach took time to learn.

“We acknowledge that the day is hard,” she says. “And then we find something good to look forward to.”

Not because the grief has faded, it hasn’t. Life, however, keeps going, and that’s what pulls their family forward. Anita says to focus on finding the next fun thing to look forward to: a weekend trip, a new activity to try, or pick out your favorite spots to create a bucket list of vacation destinations.

Positive, productive planning will put you on the pathway to peace. The kind of peace that builds strength, the kind of peace that empowers surviving families help reinforce their way forward.

Why the Love Lives On Act Matters to Military Survivor Families

Anita’s testimony centers on the Love Lives On Act, bipartisan legislation addressing federal remarriage provisions tied to certain military survivor benefits. Under current federal law, remarriage before age 55 may result in the suspension of specific benefits, including components of the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) and, depending on the benefit and individual circumstances, aspects of Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC).

“These benefits were earned through service and sacrifice,” Anita says. “Remarriage shouldn’t mean starting over financially.”

After the hearing, Sophia will speak publicly. To her, the fairness question feels direct.

“Kids need a father figure. I don’t understand why a surviving spouse would have to give up earned benefits upon remarrying.”

Choosing love again, she says, doesn’t erase the first love. Sophia says she has noticed something else.

“It’s disappointing that some congressional representatives seem unconcerned.”

Sophia says there is more that anyone can do to help:

“Contact your senators and representatives to support military survivor families. Your action can help ensure fair policies for those who have lost a parent in military service.”

What Surviving Military Children Want Adults to Know

Sophia says that adults don’t need to be unbreakable; kids just need them to be honest. Military children survivors need someone to recognize the tightened jaw, the drifting focus, and not dismiss it as a mood. They need room to laugh at practice and still miss their parent later that night without being praised for being “so strong.”

Surviving military children deserve and require policies that don’t make rebuilding family life feel like a penalty. For Anita, TAPS provided a connection with other parents raising grieving children with virtual calls, in-person events, and guidance grounded in lived experience.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” she says.

For anyone struggling with the loss of a military service member who feels like they don’t have a place to turn to and nowhere to go with their grief, Anita and Sophia want everyone to know that TAPS exists to support all of the survivors in our military community; no one is excluded.

You are not alone.

Suggested reads:

• What Is a Geo Bachelor? Its Meaning & How to Prepare for the Lifestyle
• Congress May Finally End the Remarriage Penalty for Widowed Military Spouses
• The Soldier and Family Readiness Group: How Army Families Stay Connected and Supported