An important thing I’ve learned during my grief journey and during the years I have been facilitating grief groups and mainly from listening to others tell their stories, is that grief is a multifaceted experience that has components of our cultural expectations, of how we loved and of how we lived our lives together with our loved ones. Even more importantly perhaps, is that in some way, grief impacts most of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual parts of who we are. In my experience, grief extends into every aspect of our lives and has parts of all that we are that it touches and encompasses.

At this meeting, we will look at how what we have been told or what we hear and read while we are grieving may create patterns that we take forward with us through our grief journeys. In a general way, it suggests that most of the models of grief that have been expressed and accepted throughout the years, are reflections of the cultures that adopted them. We will also address some ideas about what the broad patterns and models of grief we accept might contain that may, in today’s thinking, not necessarily be helpful or useful artifacts of the cultures and the people (possibly the “non-bereaved”) who created such models.

The majority of this discussion however, will be addressing the intriguing questions: “do I have to grieve forever” and similarly, “will my grief ever end”, something I’ve been asked by grieving spouses and partners and by counsellors and facilitators and that most of us have or will ask ourselves sometime along the way.

Some ideas about grieving and models of grief: 

To me, the idea that we have to grieve forever is as much a one sided idea as the idea we’ve talked about at other meetings, that grief should be denied, avoided or ended as soon as possible. 

If we follow the model that it is wrong in some way to grieve, or that we shouldn’t grieve for very long or that we shouldn’t show or talk about our grief, then we deny that there is a “normal” grieving process that we need to go through and we deny the importance of grieving as part of our healthy growth and our healthy movement forward in our lives to a place of wellness. By denying grief and the need to grieve, that model diminishes our need to go through and process and finally accept the passing of our loved one, all that has happened and changed in our lives and the time it takes to do that. 

Not expressing grief, avoiding it and treating it as if it were somehow “pathological“ is actually part of an older model of grieving that is based on an older way of living, thinking and dealing with emotions and feelings. It comes from a time when people were taught to and were expected to suppress their emotions and keep them internalized. 

Modern grief support programs frequently work to end people’s belief in that model and to unlock people from repressing their grief and to try to help them to open up to their feelings and to grieve as they need to and as they have to.

There is also a still older model of grief that has also moved into what we we sometimes encounter now, that conversely tells us that we do indeed have to grieve forever. In that model, a person needs to grieve forever to hold open the place that their loved ones filled in their lives so they can continue to keep what that person meant to them, what they have lost and what their loved ones presence built within them open, present, full and possibly painful, forever. This idea might still strongly resonate with our intense feelings at the beginning of our grief journeys.

Those models can also confuse us by their opposition but it might be helpful to remember that even though we still encounter them or maybe even feel them today, they both really reflect the older times and cultures they were developed in. 

As an alternative to both of those older models, what I have learned from my years of bereavement and my years of facilitating grief support groups and the model I have been presenting and following in our meetings and discussions, is that each person needs to grieve for as long as they need to, to express their grief when they feel it and that grief needs to be allowed to evolve and to eventually fade and come to an end in its own organic time and place in each person’s journey.

I also believe that models of grief and the bereavement programs that follow them need to be allowed to evolve and change through time as new insights show us new ways to understand and navigate our grief and grieving.

Neither grieving forever, nor putting grief aside as quickly as possible, nor ignoring grief entirely, address the realities of what we actually experience in our grieving. I believe that we need to fully experience our grief and all it contains but that we also need to move through it, accept it and eventually let it go, so that, when we are ready, we may come to an end of our grief and begin to fully live again in the time we have ahead of us. 

Do we have to grieve forever ????

I will grieve forever! I’ve heard this from so many bereaved spouses and partners over the years I’ve been facilitating support groups. I’ve read it in books and seen it online and on social media. I’ve heard it repeated like a mantra. But, is it really true or necessary?

Here are lots of questions and what if’s (with not many specific or universal answers) to ask about this idea and for us to talk about and see how it looks and feels to us. Our feelings and comments may be very different for each of us depending on who we are and where we are at in our grief journeys.

Where does it come from:

Do we really have to grieve forever or is it something that we have heard and read that has become a reality of our grieving because that’s what everyone says? It seems to be common knowledge, but is it true?

Where did this idea come from? Who decided that it was true? Is it a statement that has been passed down through the years that we now also believe or say because that’s what we have been taught to believe or say? Is it something from the past that has made its way into our modern thinking? Was it true then? Is it true now?

How do we know? Do we say it and hold to it because it makes us comfortable in some way, because we feel guilty if we don’t say it, repeat it or feel it? Is it a self-fulfilling prophesy? Do we grieve forever because we believe we will and we believe that we have to? Is it something we intuitively feel, especially early in our journeys and so we say it and carry it with us throughout our grief and grieving. But the real question here may then be: does or should our grief ever end?

What if:

What if “I will grieve forever” is just something that someone once said that has somehow appeared in the literature and culture of grief over and over and because we have read it and heard it so many times, we feel it must be true and we repeat it, believe it and then live it? What if it’s a phrase that has been repeated so often on social media that it has become “a truth” about grief? What if it has somehow become a model of grief that people choose to follow?

Do we say we will grieve forever as a way to hold onto the person who is no longer with us? Do we need to grieve forever to hold onto the person who is no longer with us? Do we need to follow an older model of grief and “wear black”, on the outside or on the inside for the rest of our lives to keep that person “alive” in our hearts? 

Alternatively, can we perhaps find a way to incorporate who our loved ones were and what they meant to us and what our shared lives built within us into who we are now that doesn’t include grief or grieving forever? Can we have the memories of our lives together move into a place not shrouded by grief but have them be no less important and powerful, a place that honors and treasures all we are now because of our lives together with our loved ones?

Letting go:

What would happen if we just let our grief go if it tried to leave and we began to fully live again and let the memories of our lives together with our loved ones be what they are without the filter of grief and the pain it encompasses shrouding our lives? 

What if it was ok to do that without guilt and we aren’t somehow dishonoring our loved ones by not grieving them any longer? What if letting our grief go is a “normal” part of the healing process that we have been taught to ignore? 

What if grief was trying to go away and end on its own, through the passing of time and through our living on our own and through all we have learned, and the work we have done and we held it back. What if we were keeping it with us when it was actually done just because we have been told that’s what we should do? What if it eventually was like a sore tooth that we kept putting our tongue on that kept the pain alive?

While we will always be widows and widowers because of the passing of our spouses or partners, does that definition have to include grieving forever? Can grieving become a way of life? Can it become part of our identity? Can it become a habit? Is that a healthy way to go forward, to never let it go and to grieve forever?

What if, when we are ready and if it happens, we can actually stop grieving but still retain all the memories, including all the sadness and all the missing you of not having our loved ones in our lives anymore but let the grieving end and allow us to be free of that overwhelming feeling? Can we finally be free of that huge weight of grief that sits almost unnoticed on our shoulders and in our lives? What if our grief ends and we only notice it and realize we are free of it when it’s gone?

What if we could come to a place of peace where we can remember the reality of our lives together and the love we shared without looking at it through the filter of grief? 

Closure, finding an end to grief:

What part does grieving forever play in acceptance? If we come to accept what has happened as well as the myriad changes it has brought into our lives, how long do we need to continue to grieve?

Could letting go of our grief and having it come to an end actually be healing and liberating? Can it be a type of closure? Can we do that without guilt?

When the bereaved learn to believe and say the statement or have the thought that “I will grieve forever”, in a sense do they deny themselves the ability to find a closure at the end to their grief journeys.

We create closure in so many parts of what the bereaved experience and what they do at the beginning of their bereavement. They get closure in memorials, in funerals, in celebrations of life, in seeing their loved ones remains interred, even in working through the paperwork. But, they rarely see or get closure in their grief itself because they are told, or they feel, or they believe that they have to or that they should, grieve forever, that there is or should be no ending to their grief. 

But, I have seen that, since grief is something that is happening to us, it is healthy and healing to have closure at the end of our bereavement, just as much as it was at the beginning. I believe that finding that closure allows us to more clearly move forward in our lives as part of being able to find healing and wellness. 

I think that when we are ready, we need to be allowed to reach this type of closure at the end of our grief and reach a final acceptance of all that has happened and changed in our lives. I believe we need to be given the grace and the freedom to reach the end of our journey and have the hope we have held for so long be realized, that we can finally replace our grief with wellness and life.  

Why do we need to grieve forever:

So, why do we need to grieve forever? Why is it important? Is it more conducive to healing to be able to see our grief end and replace it with life and wellness? If wellness is a place we want to reach, will believing throughout our grief journeys that we will have to grieve forever allow us to find wellness and a richness in the next part of our lives when we are ready to do so, or is grieving forever somehow in the way? 

Should we seek wellness in the first place or do we honor our loved ones more by continuing to hurt and feel the emptiness of them not being with us, and as the older model suggests, should we feel that way forever to honor them and who they were in our lives?

How do we know if we haven’t tried it or experienced it? What if we reach the end of grief and deny it’s ending and just hold onto it because we somehow feel that we are supposed to do that? What if it’s healthier to actually reach the end of our grieving and let it go? What if healing and wellness live on the other side of grieving? How will we know if we feel we have to grieve forever?

We can still get sad, we can still feel sorry for what happened, we can still miss our loved ones and their presence in our lives, we can still honor our love, but does that have to continue to be grief? 

So again, do we need to grieve forever or at some point can we remember, perhaps shed a small tear, and then perhaps smile, and then turn forward and continue living?

Some thoughts about how all of this fits into grief support and our grief journeys: 

Most community grief support focuses on a person’s immediate needs after the loss of a loved one and on the many things that that loss does to them at the beginning of their bereavement. Rarely does anyone have the time or the resources and maybe even the understanding to work to help them in the latter parts of their journeys. Rarely is anyone there to guide them to the end of their bereavement with anything like the attention and compassion they helped guide them with at the beginnings of their journey.

Since it can often be 5-7 years or more before most people begin to even feel the possibility of their grief coming to an end, who will be there to help us navigate that part of the journey? Who will be there to help us and encourage us to find the true and final closure that we need, perhaps as much as we needed the closure at the start of our journeys. Who will be there to help us recognize and navigate the end of grief if and when it appears in our lives?Who will be there to help us learn that there is indeed an end to grief but not an end to love?

I believe that bereaved spouses and partners need to be free to learn and understand that, when they are ready, they can go forward in a new way and that they can become whole again. And that its ok to do that. That over time, we need to learn to be able to include and incorporate all of the love, memories and parts of ourselves that we became during the time we had with our loved ones into who we are now as we build the next part of our lives, finally free of grief. Letting our grief end is not about forgetting either!

In most models of grief and grieving, we aren’t really given this choice or that chance. 

Instead of being told that we have to grieve forever, that there is no end to grief, I believe that we might need to look to another model that gives us the affirmation that we can indeed reach the end of grief, that it is ok to do so without guilt and that we can then experience all the freedom of action, thought and emotion that finding closure at the end of our grief journeys might include. 

If we are taught or come to believe thatthere is no end to grief, that we have to grieve forever, how will anyone ever reach an end we are taught not to believe in or expect to find?

It may be wise and important however, not to challenge or deny the “I will grieve forever” thoughts and expressions of the newly bereaved and of those in the early parts of their grief journeys. I think it’s important to recognize and understand that the newly bereaved especially, need to say that and believe that to sooth their aching souls and hearts. But can we also recognize that when we say “I will grieve forever”, we may really be saying “I will love you forever” and maybe also that “I will miss you forever” and that it is ok for us to do that as well. 

Can we instead understand that when we say that we will grieve forever, that it may be a temporary place, a temporary need and a temporary statement that we may need to make early in our journeys?  

Then, can support and support groups help to guide us to eventually put that idea aside and help us, when we are ready, to change our internal dialog from “I will grieve forever” to something like, “I am ready to heal” “I am ready to change”, “I am ready to grow”, “I am ready to end my grieving”. Can we help to transition to the final part of our journey, the last of the healing and acceptance we need that leads us to “I am healed of my grief but I have not reached the end of my love” that then lets us move into the next part of our lives with acceptance and a new hope and future.

Questions:

• Do you think you have to grieve forever?

• Do you think it dishonors your love to consider an end to your grief?

• Would you feel guilty if your grief came to an end?

• Why would you feel that way?

• Can you see any reasons why it might be healing to know that grief can end?

• Can you see reasons why it might be good to let grief come to an end

• Can you see any ways that you might let grief come to an end?

• Can you see how ending your grief might be a closure that helps open the door to the next part of your life?

• Might it be easier to find healing and move forward into the next part of your life if you believed that your grief could come to an end instead of that you had to grieve forever?