Grief, the unsung hero of emotions (grief part 1)

Did you know that grief is an emotion? We’re often taught, if we’re taught at all about grief, that it’s more of a response to a negative event, usually death. Grief is not given its props as a legitimate emotion, when in fact, it’s one we experience very regularly, perhaps more consistently than any other emotion.

If you ask most people about their grief they’ll usually tell you about people who have passed away. Is that what you think of when you hear the word grief? Some people have a disproportionate amount of this type of grief. I have relatively few losses of this type in my life, but I have definitely had my fair share of grief.

Grief is about so much more than loss through death. Let’s look at some ways grief shows up in our everyday life. Relationships are pretty much the holy grail for grief. When you get in a fight with your partner, that’s grief. When your boss fails to recognize your hard work, grief. When you feel sick inside because you just yelled at your child, yep, that’s grief too. Then there’s situational grief, you lose a job, get in a car wreck, your child goes off to college, you don’t get a promotion you desperately wanted. There’s our historical grief, the pain we hold inside from not getting what we needed as children or even as adults. And there’s even ancestral grief which is passed on for generations through DNA and ideologies. The pain our ancestors experienced can live inside of us without us even being aware.

Are you starting to see there’s a lot more to grief than we’ve been taught?

Generally, we think of the challenges in our lives as just that, challenges. We don’t usually think of them as grief. What do grief and challenges have in common? We’ve been taught that the best way to deal with them both is to just get over them. Just pretend like it’s no big deal, find a way to move past it and get on with your freaking life already. JUST. GET. OVER. IT.

Turns out, that’s not actually the best way. Just getting over it leads to us internalizing our pain and stuffing it in some hollow spot in our soul or our body and hoping it just disappears somehow, but that is rarely if ever the case. The pain doesn’t go away, it finds ways to been seen in our reactions and our emotions. When we ignore our problems or skip the lesson they have for us, we either repeat them, or become very sensitive to similar situations and develop a coping mechanism for them.

I’ll share an example.

I used to attract friendships where I supported my friends more than they supported me. It was always easy and safe to listen to and not have to open myself up much. I truly love being there for people, and this was how I thought friendships worked. One person gives emotionally, and one person takes. One day a friend I’d had for a few years called me, and she talked for 45 minutes straight about her life, telling me every little detail of what was happening, all her challenges and exciting moments, she told me about her new relationship, that she was moving, and I could not get a word in. At the end, without ever asking once how I was doing or what was up in my life she quickly said, “I gotta run”, and that was it. I had something very important to share with her that day, something that in fact would end our friendship as we knew it. The person I had started dating was her ex and I wanted her to hear it from me. I desperately wanted to tell her but there was no space for me in the conversation. I know you may be saying, “I’m sure you could have if you really wanted to Gina.” But I’m so sincere when I tell you, there was no room for me in the conversation.  Her whirlwind of chatter spun through my brain like a cyclone and like that it was done.

After we hung up, I sat in the aftermath of the very one-sided conversation, and it occurred to me that the friendship was not reciprocal. I can still recall how it felt when that realization swept over my awareness. It started at my head, then moved down through my body. I felt dismissed, uncared for and unimportant. And I had a choice. I could “just get over it” and continue in our imbalanced relationship as it always had been. I could be there for her over and over, getting very little in return. Or I could change something. I remember thinking it was no longer ok for me to have friends who don’t care about me. I didn’t skip the lesson; I didn’t avoid the feelings. I felt sad realizing that for a few years I had been giving a lot and not receiving much. But I also realized that this was a turning point for me.  

I had a few more friendships after that with similar issues, but the balance always got a little better. I became more aware of people who didn’t ask how I was doing or listen when I needed them to. I learned to recognize those behaviors very quickly when I met new friends, and as soon as I did, I would pull back. I wanted amazing fully reciprocal friendships and I’m so happy to say that those are the friendships I have today, with so many incredible, empowered, and empowering people who truly love and support me consistently.

I shudder to think where I would be today if I had skipped that lesson.  

That day after our call I felt sad, frustrated, confused, disappointed in myself for not telling her, and a little betrayed. I felt grief because someone I loved didn’t hold me in the same regard.  

When grief knocks on your door it can be a call to look at what’s not working in your life. It can also be a reminder that we truly love something. Love is in fact grief’s sister emotion. It is love that makes grief possible and vice versa.

What’s next? If you’re loving this perspective on Grief you can read my post on Navigating Grief.