Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

by Lysa TerKeurst

A note from Jim on the grieving process Going through the grieving process and having funerals for relationships is hard, but it’s healthy and beneficial for many reasons, including the following: Helps you get closure. Grieving a relationship is a personal experience and not dependent on the other person. Allows you to release what was real, what wasn’t real, and what will never be the same again. Creates a space to feel the loss of investing many years of your life in a relationship that didn’t unfold the way you wanted, nor did it last a lifetime as you’d hoped. Allows you to finally let go of the person you thought they were, but also to consider who you were with that person. This creates an opportunity to ask some internal questions, such as, “What did I miss early on that should have been a red flag?” “What did I tolerate for too long?” “What parts of myself did I lose that I want to get back?” Helps you get to a better place before new layers and waves of grief come. For example, facing the reality that the spouse you divorced or the friend you let go of may be validated and even celebrated by others as a great person when that wasn’t your experience at all. Helps ensure you begin to heal, because what you don’t work out, you’ll act out. Unhealed grief will spill, or sometimes even spew, onto other people—our kids, family members, friends—and can even contribute to long-term mental health issues.