This discussion starts with some definitions of common terms we use in talking about grief and then goes on to some ways of thinking about grief that may help give some structure to our journeys at almost any point along the way. These ideas can be especially helpful in the early parts of our journeys as we try to find ways to understand what is happening to us. 

Definitions:  What are we actually talking about here?

Grief: is a deep sorrow, especially when caused by someones death. It is a feeling within yourself in response to someone dying. 

I think the important thing to remember here is that grief is a feeling or actually a large and complex group of very intense feelings. Especially early in the journey, they periodically come over us and often kind of take us over. It is a mostly visceral reaction and not rational or thoughtful much at all. 

It may even be more important to realize that although we are grieving the passing of our loved ones, much of our energy and time going forward will usually be devoted to trying to find our way through our grief and to find healing from what we feel and experience in our grief!

Grieving: is what is happening to us as we grieve. 

Grieving is what we experience, feel and go through during our grief. Grieving can be a long, intense, often painful and sometimes even traumatic experience that can profoundly effect us and change us as we grieve.

Clinical grief: Debilitating grief that lasts for longer than a year.

Mourning: is an expression of deep sorrow caused by someones death. It is the outward expression of our inner feelings (of grief) when someone dies. Mourning is the way we outwardly expressor show how our grief makes us feel.

“Grief-fog”: is a way of describing a time, usually early in our journeys, when grief is almost totally in control and we are so consumed by it that we just seem to wander through our lives, barely aware of what we are doing or saying as we try to navigate through our grief. Especially looking back, many people talk about “spending the first year of their bereavement in a fog”.

Healing:The process of becoming sound or healthy again. To alleviate a person’s distress or anguish. To restore a person to spiritual wellness. 

Healing implies an active, ongoing process, a change through time where an unwell aspect of our lives moves toward wellness, especially with our active participation. 

In grief, healing is actually a part of our bereavement. It is a time and a process we go through as we begin to rebuild our lives after the passing of our loved ones and while we learn to find our way into the next part of our lives without them. Going forward, healing is mostly going to be about finding our way through and learning to accommodate all that we experience in our grief and grieving.

Wellness:The state of being in good health, physically, mentally or spiritually, especially as an actively pursued goal. 

In grief, I refer to wellness as a time and place where we mostly accept the changes that have occurred in our lives and where our grief becomes secondary to healing and beginning to live with intent in the next part of our lives.

Grief, Healing and Wellness may occur separately or together and they can often overlap as one or another of them becomes more dominant along our paths. There is essentially an overlapping continuum from grief through healing to wellness.

It’s your grief:

As with all parts of grief, what you experience will be your feelings, they will be your grief and they will reflect who you are and how you loved. 

While our individual journeys through our bereavement are unique, they also contain many commonalities that we can share. Going forward, we will explore some of those common places and let them help us understand that we are not alone nor are we the only ones experiencing much of what we are going through in our grief and grieving. 

As you begin to navigate through your grief journeys, it might help to remember that, as I said at the last meeting, we grieve because we love. I believe it is important to remember and understand thatit is our love and the ending of our lives with our loved ones that cause us to grieve. 

We miss our loved ones and all the interactions and time we spent together. We miss the things we did and said and were to each other. We miss the things we planned and will never get to do together or the things we will never get to do together again. We feel the sadness and loneliness of being without them filling the now empty space they filled in our daily lives. And so we grieve!

There is also a physiological component to our grieving as well, where our brain and it’s chemistry react to the absence of our loved ones that seems to interact with and perhaps compliment our intense thoughts, feelings and emotions. It’s not all just chemistry however!

Some ideas to consider no matter where you are in your journey:

The main thing I want to focus on now is based on something I learned from my wife Andi during her cancer journey. She decided early on, as she realized what she was facing, that she was not going to beher cancer. She was going to be herself living with cancer and she was going to go on living her life despite it and be herself as much as possible through it all. And she did!

What I learned was to apply that powerful idea to the experience of grieving for myself as, I am not my grief, I am grieving and collectively as:

We are not our grief, We are grieving…

Being our grief or becoming our grief seems to me to contain the idea that grief has been incorporated into who and what we are, that it has become a permanent part of us and that we are somehow stuck in a new life of grief without end. 

We are not our grief, not being our grief or being separate from our grief, to me means that grief doesn’t own us or define us. Grief is not actually a part of who we are, it is something we are experiencing and so, in time, we can also pass through it and we can eventually  let it go. We are grieving means that our grief is something that is happening to us and is not part of our selves.

I believe that there is more than a semantic difference here. How you look at grief and grieving and how you define them, in many ways, controls how you react to them and how you choose to approach finding healing and wellness going forward.

And here is another important thing to consider as we grieve; we are intensely effected by and changed by the experience of grieving. The experience of going through our grieving changes us just as any intense experience in our lives changes us.

Please also try to remember as you go forward or as you look back at earlier parts of your grief journey, that while grief and all its components appeared suddenly in our lives with the passing of our loved ones, any element of our grief can also diminish or leave when it is time for it to go. And in the end, as I mentioned at the last meeting, I think that we might also consider that if and when we say or think “I will grieve forever”, what we might really be saying is that “I will love you forever”!

A last idea to consider: 

As we grieve, I think it is very important to remember that there is no one way to grieve and there is no “right way” to grieve. There is no time-table, nor a “should do” list, nor a calendar, the instruction book is still missing and it isn’t hidden on the internet! 

However long it takes, that’s how long it takes, whatever happens along the way is what happens along the way.

When it’s time to do something on your grief journey, you will know it but it should be when it feels right for you and not when somebody or some book or something you saw on the internet or on social media, or something you heard in a podcast says you should do something or be something. Reading books and “researching” about grief on the “internet library” is fine but it might be worth considering that you won’t necessarily learn about your grief that way!

Because there is no single right way to do it or experience it, you can do it in your own way and do it in your own time. It’s not up to others to tell you how or when to grieve nor for anyone to tell you when your grieving should be ended. It’s just different for each of us and we need to follow our own feelings and our own hearts… 

And I want to affirm here again as I repeatedly do: It’s always OK to grieve! We have the need and the right to grieve as and when and for as long as we need to. Grieving is the process through which we find healing within and from our grief.

I might add here too, that it’s also ok to take a break from our grieving from time to time. It’s ok to find some activities or interactions that let us leave our grief behind for awhile. But, we also should try to remember that at some point, we really do have to go back and grieve to find healing. You can’t heal from your grief if you don’t allow yourself to grieve…

Negative grief and mourning behaviors:  

Just as a last comment here, there can also be grief or mourning behaviors that might be the results of pain, anger, guilt or frustration within our grief that can be loud or violent or hurtful to ourselves or others. If those types of behaviors do start to manifest, please try to be aware of that as a time to seek professional help if your grief or grieving becomes too intense to navigate by yourself or within a group setting.

Questions:

Does it help to think of being separate from your grief and not let it be who you are?

Can you see a way to separate from your grief but still remain yourself within the grieving?

Can you perhaps think of any examples of you and your grief being different and separate?

What is your grieving like for you and how has it changed you?

What would you be willing to share about how your grief makes (made) you feel and act, especially in the early days? What does (did) it feel like for you then

How does it feel to you now?

Is it OK for you to grieve?