The Irreverent Grief Guide: How to F*cking Survive Months 1-3

by Elizabeth Kupferman

Fuck the fake assholes and so-called sympathizers who say, “let me know if there is anything I can do to help” (but you can tell by their tone that they don’t mean it).

Platitudes are the fuck yous of condolences. I know you’re thinking “But, Elizabeth, they mean well.” Do not be fooled. They do not mean well. Platitudes pretend to be kind and helpful, but the real purpose of a platitude is to stop your grief in its tracks, and a person who uses them does not have your best interest at heart. They are being completely disrespectful to your very real and valid pain. The platitude giver doesn't want to be bothered with any of your uncomfortable feelings, and they don’t want to be confronted with their own mortality or existential truths.

Even if you believe that "everything happens for a reason,” and live by it, it does not mean you don’t also get to grieve what you have lost.

My favorite is “Gimme Chocolate!!” by Babymetal;

People are ashamed of their grief, even with a safe person.

you may be embarrassed by your expressions and manifestations of grief, as if your suffering is wrong and disgraceful.

The Grief Crown.

“Bitch, if you died, I would be so fucking proud of how wrecked and destroyed I would be, because it would mean that our relationship was sacred and deep and that I was lucky enough to experience a real and magical relationship like ours. I would wear my grief for you like a crown, and I’d be so gratified and proud of it.”

I want you to wear and experience grief like a crown, because it’s something to be proud of and something that is incredibly sacred and beautiful. Your grief is full of integrity, gratitude, and authenticity. To be clear, grief is still a going to make your life a complete fucking shit show, but from this moment on, you will never be ashamed of grieving a person that you dearly love. That would be sacrilege.

Your grief exists because of Love. It is a direct expression of love for your person who died.

Grief = Love

Grief is in direct proportion to the love you shared.

But here you are living in a society that thinks you will be able to “get over it” in about two weeks to a month

Eschewing your shame of grief means you won’t feel lame about how hard you’re taking it. It means that you have empathy and kindness for yourself as you try to make sense of the wreckage wrought by the devastating death.

You’ve lost something invaluable and irreplaceable, and it is a normal reaction not to be okay for a long time.

Wearing the Grief Crown honors both YOU and your person, because after all, you are also grieving the relationship that you had with them, while they were still on the planet with you. Grief is a beautiful testimony to your relationship.

And because you are royalty, wear your crown, bitch.

You got through the first month and that’s an incredible achievement because the first month is brutal.

Remember, you can’t get grief wrong.

Your Functioning is going to get a lot worse before it gets better

Your Functioning (the extent to which you will be able to accomplish the responsibilities in your life) is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

This is the way it is, and your life will go better this year if you live by this.

I help them clear things off their calendar, remind them to increase self-care, coping mechanisms, increase rest and take it extremely easy.

The same goes for you, your decrease in functioning is not your fault.

Remember how I taught you that your psychological immune system helped you survive the pain? Well, it’s still working brilliantly and knows that you can handle a little bit more each month.

Each month, the grief becomes more real, and you have to deal with more of your thoughts, emotions, and physical experiences of grief and, bitch, that is fucking exhausting work.

Understanding that you are doing your grief work can be the antidote to feeling useless and like you’re accomplishing nothing.

Your psychological immune system/psyche is always busy trying to process your loss on this level.

Conscious grief work is when you are actively doing things to process your grief and adjust to your new world aka the Club.

I’m suggesting that everything thing you do in your life to keep it running is conscious grief work.

This is typically the only thing people identify as “grief work” except for crying and being sad.

Whenever you talk about your grief experience or the grief itself to anyone, you are doing intentional work.

You are not only always grieving, but you’re doing it on multiple levels.

like to think that for every single tear I cry, that’s one less I must cry, and I’m closer to the other side. If I get angry and express it, that’s one less time I’ll lose my shit and I’m closer to the other side.

“Tasks of Mourning,” which I’ll refer to as “grief tasks” for the sake of simplicity and clarity.

The death doesn’t seem real at all.

The first task of grieving is to come full face with the reality that the person is dead, that the person is gone

and will not return. Part of the acceptance of this reality is coming to believe that reunion is impossible, at least in this life.

a lot of us have moments when we forget that the death has happened.

That “forgetting” is a sign of you working on the first task. People feel so guilty about temporarily forgetting that the death happened because they think they’ve done something wrong by forgetting.

The momentary forgetting has nothing to do with a choice you’ve made; it has to do with your psyche attempting to protect you. The psyche creates the forgetting to help you survive the pain by giving you little breaks from it.

Moments like these, of accepting the reality of the loss, will happen to you over the course of your lifetime unconsciously (psychological immune system), consciously, or intentionally.

Refusing to accept the death as a real event that has happened will lead to a worse outcome and that’s not the life you want.

Accepting the reality is one of those truths that ultimately set you free, but first it will shatter you into a million pieces.

Grief work isn’t about grieving perfectly. If anything, I would love for you to embrace the imperfection of your grief and your grief coping. Trust your imperfect grieving process.

Clean pain is when you’re in pain, you experience the pain. Dirty Pain is when you feel the pain, but instead of accepting it and processing it, you dirty up your pain with negative thoughts about having the pain.

forgetfulness is one of the main symptoms of grief.

It turns out that loneliness is normal pain of grief.

Here are some of the signs and symptoms listed you may experience according to Worden (2018, p. 20-30).

Part of dealing with thoughts, emotions, and physical symptoms is understanding that they will happen with or without a trigger. Ultimately, grief is the trigger and grief is living with the experience of the loss. Consider yourself always triggered by grief; sometimes you’ll recognize the triggers (conscious grief) and sometimes you won’t (unconscious grief).