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March 28 - March 28, 2020
Every time I came across someone else’s story of grief I felt a little less alone.
just how thirsty our culture is for the conversation about loss and how we cope with it.
Our grief is as individual as our lives. Maybe it doesn’t even go through all the stages. Any way you experience grief is your way, and I’m a big believer that the more we talk about it, the more we go through the healing process, and the better we will be in time.
There is a saying that if your writing doesn’t keep you up at night, it will never keep anyone else up at night either.
“Listen to the dying. They will tell you everything you need to know about when they are dying. And it is easy to miss.”
Uncertainty can be an excruciating existence.
People often find themselves telling the story of their loss over and over, which is one way that our mind deals with trauma. It is a way of denying the pain while trying to accept the reality of the loss. As denial fades, it is slowly replaced with the reality of the loss.
Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. We often choose it to avoid the feelings underneath until we are ready to face them.
If we ask people to move through their anger too fast, we only alienate them. Whenever we ask people to be different than they are, or to feel something different, we are not accepting them as they are and where they are. Nobody likes to be asked to change and not be accepted as they are. We like it even less in the midst of grief.
Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. People often tell us our anger is misplaced, inappropriate, or disproportionate. Some people may feel your anger is harsh or too much. It is their problem if they don’t know how to deal with it. Unfortunately for them, they too will know the anger of loss someday. But for now, your job is to honor your anger by allowing yourself to be angry. Scream if you need to. Find a solitary place and let it out. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure
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To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing.
But in grief, depression is a way for nature to keep us protected by shutting down the nervous system so that we can adapt to something we feel we cannot handle.
The reality is that your grief is there and available for processing, on or off medication. Some people feel that medications simply put a floor in for them to deal with their depression.
Most people’s initial reaction to sad people is to try to cheer them up, to tell them not to look at things so grimly, to look at the bright side of life. This cheering-up reaction is often an expression of that person’s own needs and that person’s own inability to tolerate a long face over an extended period. A mourner should be allowed to experience his sorrow, and he will be grateful for those who can sit with him without telling him not to be sad. A mourner may be in the midst of life and yet not a participant in all the activities considered living: unable to get out of bed; tense,
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We must learn to reorganize roles, reassign them to others or take them on ourselves. The more of your identity that was connected to your loved one, the harder it will be to do this.
Losses are very personal and comparisons never apply. No loss counts more than another. It is your loss that counts for you. It is your loss that affects you. Your loss is deep and deserves your personal attention without comparison. You are the only one who can survey the magnitude of your loss. No one will ever know the meaning of what was shared, the deepness of the void that shadows your future.
We think we should have only one emotion, but many conflicting emotions exist in us at the same time.
In grief we often have a deep well of different emotions occurring at the same time, which is what makes grief confusing. We don’t have to choose which emotion is right or wrong. We can feel each emotion as it occurs and understand that relief is not disloyalty but rather a sign of deep love.
We can touch the pain directly for only so long until we have to back away.
Be careful not to take on new relationships with lots of emotions.
If you can postpone complex or important decisions, do so. If you can’t, ask for help. Invite trustworthy friends and family members to give you guidance. A year down the road, you may still find things so emotionally draining that you need to change.
We are all human. There are very few people who can say they don’t have even a small regret.
Life is usually shorter than we hoped, and we are often unprepared for loss. So it is only natural that things will feel unfinished.
We often don’t have the time to completely do everything we had hoped to. Very few people feel like they got to do it all, much less do it well.
We will always have a dream unfulfilled, a wish not yet granted. Chances are that no matter how much you did for your loved one, how you cared for them and loved them, there wi...
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Tears are one of the many ways we release our sadness, one of our many wondrous built-in healing mechanisms.
The worst thing you can do is to stop short of really letting it out. Uncried tears have a way of filling the well of sadness even more deeply. If you have a half hour of crying to do, don’t stop at twenty minutes. Let yourself cry it all out. It will stop on its own. If you cry till your last tear, you will feel released.
Unexpressed tears do not go away; their sadness resides in our bodies and souls. Tears can often be seen as dramatic, too emotional, or a sign of weakness. But in truth, they are an outward expression of inner pain.
In grief groups we often have a rule: “Everyone has to grab their own tissues.” Sometimes when someone starts to cry, everyone grabs the tissue box and shoves tissues at them. While this may be an act of comfort, it often sends the message “hurry and stop crying.” Also, if we go into the role of caretaker, we avoid our own emotions.
The truth is that tears are a symbol of life and can be trusted.
Dreams can provide information about what is really going on inside us.
Art therapy can help people give physical form to their visions as these move from mind to canvas. Whatever your vision may be, find a way to get it out. Try to externalize it. Talk about it. Write a letter.
Hauntings may be signs that you will be okay, or more specifically that it is okay to live again, to find happiness again, and even to find love again.
Telling the story is part of the healing of a traumatic event, no different from the trauma of large-scale disaster. In your world it was a large-scale disaster, most likely the biggest you have ever experienced.
Telling your story often and in detail is primal to the grieving process. You must get it out. Grief must be witnessed to be healed. Grief shared is grief abated.
In days long gone, elders sat in a circle, telling the stories to the young. These stories held enormous value. Today, in our “shut up, get over it, and move on” mentality, our society misses so much, it’s no wonder we are a generation that longs to tell our stories.
The ways we now have in our society to share our loss become fewer as we discount grief and loss. But ultimately we learn that not telling the story and holding it back also takes an enormous amount of energy. Saying we are fine to a good friend can feel just horrible afterward. Telling our story is primal, and not telling it can be unnatural.
When someone is telling you their story over and over, they are trying to figure something out. There has to be a missing piece or they too would be bored.
