The Importance of Grief
Grief: it transcends time, space, and cultures; connects us to our mortality, faith, and the world; reveals to us our deepest fears and anxieties, and it bonds us even more deeply to what and who we have loved and cared for. It is said the size of our grief can also be measured by the size of our love. As painful and jarring as it can be, grief is often described as an extension of the beautiful and wonderful parts of the human experience too. Grief exists because we have loved, and for that reason it is one of the most powerful experiences we endure as humans. It is only natural that due to its all-encompassing nature, grief has become a topic I am incredibly passionate about in my line of work. With that being said, I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my knowledge and tips with the hope it might help you or someone you know who is experiencing grief.
Grief was once understood as a 5-stage process: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. Established by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969, she elaborated on this model to explain it is less of a process and more of an observation of the dying, not the grieving. Grief does not exist in stages; rather, it exists on a continuum that we flow through at varying rates and degrees. We may feel anger, denial, and depression, and we may bargain and find acceptance, though we also experience anxiety, confusion, sadness, discontentment, guilt, and shame, and pockets of joy and relief.
Let’s break this down further. Other features of grief we may experience include physical symptoms, like fatigue, nausea, difficulty sleeping, maintaining weight, and aches and pains. Memory loss, forgetfulness, numbness, and detachment can also occur. We may experience a sense of presence from our loved one. If we are connected to a spiritual or religious practice, we may find instances of the divine appearing to us in dreams, insights, prayer, and intuition.
In grief, we may distance ourselves from others by pushing them away as we do our best to adjust to a new way of being in the world. Not everyone will know how to best support us through this difficult transition in our life, and it can be best to communicate with those close to us that we may need time and space to cope alone and process our pain. It is important to recognize that yearning for what or who we lost, and having a tough time moving forward in life with this loss is normal. Feeling irritable, extra sensitive, and having our world view altered after loss is also very normal.
David Kessler, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s protege, introduced a sixth “stage” to the grief process after struggling heavily with the death of his child: meaning-making. Meaning-making states that how and when we choose to make meaning of our experiences and losses is entirely up to us, and for some, the loss can be so significant that we may not reach this part of the process.
Questions we may find ourselves asking in grief:
Why did this have to happen?
How long will I feel this?
Can I survive this?
What comes next?
How do I move on?
Grief is not one-size-fits-all but instead has many faces. It is safe to say that we expect grief to look and feel a certain way, while the truth is that grief is variable. No loss is identical to another, and as such none require the same trajectory for healing. Show up for yourself and others who are grieving with humility, kindness, and respect.
Experiencing grief and loss varies with age as understanding of these processes and their effects differ across the lifespan; including the concept of death, secondary losses, and the impact of the loss. For example, a child between the ages of 6-12 may be developing the sense that death is permanent without fully grasping what that means. This child may experience changes in relational dynamics in the home and at school, changes in routines may be disruptive, and can lead to academic difficulties, social withdrawal or isolation, and fears around safety may appear. Meanwhile, a person in middle adulthood generally has a more concrete understanding of death and its finality, including its personal significance. Changes that may be experienced by this individual experiencing grief are financial instability, potential “mid-life crisis” episodes, and examining one’s life and future.
Grieving is also a deeply cultural experience. Each culture has its own process for grieving and mourning. Grieving is defined as the internal process of coping with loss while mourning is the outward expression of coping with loss. Mourning rituals and rites vary with gender, age, country, religious and spiritual affiliation, and so forth. While individuals undergo an intimate personal process, practices can also include community-inclusive rituals. One such example of this is Día de los Muertos in Mexico where participants take to the streets in song, dance, and prayer and place offerings on shrines to their lost loved ones. Judaism also performs a shiva which is a communal practice where friends and family gather with the family of the bereaved for one week immediately after the funeral to offer prayer, condolences and support. Whatever your personal belief system may be, allow the respect and non-judgment of others’ processes to be your guide in dealing with grief.
Tips for how to help those in grief:
As a bystander to someone experiencing grief and loss, try this:
Offer a listening ear and validate their experience.
Ask questions and respect their process.
Offer to take care of household chores, tasks, or errands.
Support through offering child or pet care.
Offer distractions with activities.
Do not:
Offer platitudes or positive thinking unless the bereaved desires to hear it.
Compare grief as it cannot be compared. All loss is uniquely hard.
Try to fix or solve a problem; grief is not something that can be fixed or solved.
If you are experiencing grief, try and remember the following:
Take your time; this process is nonlinear.
Relieve yourself of self-judgment and criticism of your process. It looks different for everyone and there is no wrong way to grieve.
Tend to something: a pet, a plant, serving at a soup kitchen, etc. Tending to others can provide healthy distraction and foster positive feelings, even temporarily.
Spend time outside; fresh air and nature does wonders.
Nourish yourself as best you can: drink water, eat, and move your body.
Enforce your boundaries. Say “no” to what and who drains you and say “yes” to experiences and others who uplift your soul, even if just a tiny bit.
If you, or someone you know, is experiencing grief and looking for a safe space to talk about it, join our Virtual Grief Therapy Group happening every Thursday from 2PM - 3PM EST. Email us at support@pathwaysfcs.com to sign up.