Navigating grief (grief part 2)
There comes a time after we experience a loss where people in our lives believe it’s time to stop mourning. Whether it’s “getting over” our divorce, or our partner cheating, the loss of a loved one or heaven forbid a child, grief moves on her own timeline for each of us, and no one can tell you when it’s time to be over it when in fact, you may actually never get over it. What our well-meaning people are saying is they believe we deserve to be happy again, they rarely intend to minimize our feelings or indicate there’s something wrong with us, but somehow it always feels that way. What they’re basically saying they’re ready to see our suffering end.
Question…has anyone ever actually taught you about grief?
We’re taught about sadness, anger, happiness, frustration, love, guilt, jealousy, and many other emotions, but we’re not taught what grief is much less how to deal with it. For many of us the extent of our education around grief is that it’s what you feel when someone dies and it’s okay to be sad for a while then you have to get over it and move on. My friend, that does not even scratch the surface of what grief is or how to navigate it.
If you haven’t read my post called “Grief, the unsung hero of emotions” you may want to read that first as this builds on the information.
So why in the hell have we been taught to just get over it? My short answer is that it seems easier. Getting over it is the path of least resistance. It begs us to bypass the hard stuff and some believe it makes us appear strong. In the past, appearances were often given more importance than sharing our actual experiences with each other. I thank God we are shifting away from that trend. Getting over it shows everyone we’re fine, unscathed, strong despite our circumstances. But guess what, it doesn’t work. You cannot “just get over it”. If we fail to create a healthy relationship with grief in our life we have a dysfunctional relationship with grief. And dysfunction will lead to some negative side effects. We may become fearful, mistrustful, have abandonment issues, we’ll create a coping mechanism that hides the pain, and those strategies ultimately become unsupportive behaviors and habits. We will see the world through a lens tainted by our loss. It is imperative that we learn to navigate grief in a way that supports us.
The fact that we’ve been taught so little about grief means grief makes people uncomfortable.
If you’ve ever lost someone close to you, you begin to realize how inept we are at talking about grief. People say the oddest shit when someone you love dies. They tell you it’s for the best, they’re in a better place, or they awkwardly fail to even mention it or ask how you’re doing. People can be so incredibly awkward, when the truth is we just want someone to understand and acknowledge the pain of our loss.
The same can be true of other grief as well like losing a friend, or a limb. When our child goes off to college or we get cancer. “Screw them”, “it’s their loss”, “move on”, “you deserve better”, “think positively” are all responses others may have to our grief. These phrases are not untrue, and sometimes they’re even supportive. But when delivered in the standard dismissive way that fails to acknowledge our loss or pain, they can be hurtful.
This is probably not what you were expecting to hear about grief. But I think it’s very important to note that the power of recognizing our grief is not just in facing the overwhelmingly sad experiences in our life, but it’s also in navigating the mundane grief we experience regularly. When we label the feeling attached to some of our life challenges as grief, we get a whole new framework to operate from. We are no longer powerless humans that are failing to get over ourselves and our shit. We are soulful beings who are impacted by the things that happen in our daily lives. And when we understand our challenges through the lens of grief we become empowered to experience the feeling and understand why we feel grief. Then, instead of just “getting over it” we can take action that helps us heal from the pain rather than hide from it. When we actively choose to heal and learn the lesson, we release the hold that the situation has on us. We can move forward with a new perspective, a new motive rooted in alignment instead of bitterness, anger or hatred because we did not allow our grief to fester inside of us.