12 things I know about grief and loss
Whether you’re going through loss yourself or helping someone through it, here are 12 thoughts that might help you make sense of what’s happening. I can already think of about 20 more, but here’s a start, inspired by the many sessions and conversations I’ve had with people who are grieving, and the philosophy that took me into this work.
Grief is the normal and natural response to a significant loss or change in any familiar pattern of behaviour.
If you’re grieving there is nothing wrong with you. You don’t need to be fixed or pathologised. If you are grieving, you may need many things, but perhaps above all, you need to be seen, heard and understood. Many people need their grief, and what they have lost, to be witnessed.
We normally associate grief with the death of a loved one, and that’s a huge part of it. But there are at least 40 other life events that can lead to a sense of grief. These include divorce, heartbreak, pet-loss, miscarriage, chronic illness, a loved one with a diagnosis, workplace change and retirement.
Grief is perhaps one of the most universal human experiences, and at the same time, often the most misunderstood. In today’s Western world, we are mostly taught how to accumulate things, rather than what to do when we ultimately lose them.
Grief can often feel like yearning. It’s been described as the feeling of reaching out to someone who has always been there, only to find that when you need them, just one more time, they’re no longer there. Or, in some cases, they were never there, and when you reach out, just one last time, they’re still not there.
Grief is a completely unique experience. It’s as unique as the relationship you had with the person, or thing, that you are grieving. Perhaps that’s why it can sometimes feel so lonely.
Grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative. Your life history of loss up until now will have a huge impact on what you’re currently going through, especially for past events that feel incomplete or unresolved in some way.
When we grieve, we also grieve the hopes, dreams and expectations we had for the future of the relationship that has changed or ended.
When we grieve, it’s also natural to keep thinking about all the things we wish had been different, better or more, even in situations where we felt we were able to say ‘goodbye’ or everything we wanted to at the time.
Grief produces all kinds of conflicting and contradictory, sometimes even chaotic thoughts and emotions. When you’re grieving, your brain will be trying to make sense of a reality it absolutely doesn’t want to be true. Whatever it is that you’re feeling right now might well be part of this process happening.
Grief produces a huge amount of emotional energy. It can be exhausting. Distracting yourself can be really important sometimes. But the behaviours people use to control or suppress their grief can have consequences that are more devastating than the grief itself. This can include everything from over-working to alcohol, drugs, food and shopping, even seemingly positive things such as campaigning when it’s excessive. Becoming a little more conscious of what you’re doing to manage and live with your grief - with curiosity and lots of self-compassion - can be extremely helpful.
Grief is like a room. At first you might feel as if you’re in it all the time. While that particular room will always be there, with the right help you’ll find that there are other rooms you’re able to spend increasing amounts of time in too.
No, time doesn’t heal. I heard someone beautifully describe how there are no full stops in grief, but there are definitely punctuation marks and commas. It’s likely the pain you’re experiencing now, in this current chapter will evolve. And, while this might seem unimaginable right now, you might even find yourself transforming around it.
Rather than leaving it to time or the myth of ‘keeping busy’, it’s the correct actions you take in the time you have, with the right support, that makes all the difference. Grief needs to be tended to. If you’re feeling the impact of loss right now, whether it happened a long time ago or more recently, there is hope and a more positive way forward.
If you need something more, you can book a free consultation and find out about my talks and online client work here.
An important credit: so many of these ideas come from The Grief Recovery Handbook by John W James and Russell Friedman, which has helped me enormously, and has become the philosophy that informs much of my work and life. Even the first 5 chapters are a great starting point if you’re curious to find out more.