Healthy Grieving

The death of a loved one is the most profound of all sorrows.
(The losing of ANYTHING or ANYONE precious can also be profoundly sorrowful.)
Grief associated with such losses affects your emotions, your body, your life.

You may experience the raw feelings of anguish, sorrow, regret, longing, fear, deprivation.
Your body suffers exhaustion, tension, sleeplessness, crying, loss of appetite. The loss throws your life off-balance.

And yet grieving is something more than just the sorrow. It is “to celebrate the depth of the union. Tears, then, are the jewels of remembrance, sad, but glistening with the beauty of the past. So grief in its bitterness marks the end… but it also is praise to the one/circumstance who/which is gone.” (Tatelbaum)

We are never ready to deal with such a large loss as occurs in losing someone through death.

THE GRIEF PROCESS –
No two people react to huge losses in exactly the same way.
When “Stages of Grief” are used, these stages may be used as explanatory, as a descriptive way to show what usually happens and should not in any way be regarded as prescriptive.

Stage I
Numbness, disbelief, shock, anxiety.
This stage is almost always about 12 weeks of nature’s anesthetic –
your body’s built-in protective device that puts everything into a state of unreality.

Stage II
Disorganization of the bereaved’s personality.
You try to find new goals but experience difficulty in finding meaning in new activities.

Stage III
Re-organization of the bereaved’s personality.
You gradually accept the loss and put together a life without the person (previous advantages) and you cope in increasing degrees with your new reality.

These stages can take about two to five years – depending on the circumstances of the loss, and associated losses, and the personality of the bereaved.

GRIEVING TASKS – Grieving is hard work.

Task I
Acknowledge and accept the truth that the loss has occurred, that previous contact opportunities are over, for now, at this time.

Task II
Acknowledge, experience and deal with all the emotions and problems this loss has created.

GRIEVING SUPPORT –
The process of coming to terms with the loss, and associated losses, is complex and painful.
It is vital to seek effective support from someone around you as you move backward and forward through your own timing, and visiting and moving through, in your own way, the different grief stages.

Find someone, or several people, who know how to WAIT to see what YOUR needs are.
Many people around you may feel impatient, helpless, angry, frustrated:
“I do not like to see you suffer.”
“When you cry I want to say something to stop you crying.”
“When you ask hard questions I want to give sure, helpful answers.”
“It is hard for me to wait, to let you struggle, to see you cry, to go slowly.”
“I want to comfort you and everything I try doesn’t work for you.”

Good support will let you be where you are, and, with what you are feeling.

Good support will wait, try and determine your needs.

Good support will convey to you they hurt with you.

Good support will try and learn from you what your needs are.

Good support will not rush in with easy solutions.

Good support will not easy and quickly say
“Time will heal your wounds.”
“God does not make mistakes.”
“He/She’s/You're better off.”
“If you really had faith, you would not grieve so much.”

Good support will know that
when you are grieving, you don’t care about what books or other people say.

Find someone, or a team of people, who will just be AVAILABLE to you.
Ask if you can phone them if you need to.
Invite them to visit you when you need them.
Ask if you can go and visit them if that is preferable to you.

Find at least one who can BE QUIET MOST OF THE TIME and
LISTEN to YOU.
Find people who have the compassion and wisdom to listen to you tell the same story over and over if you need to do so. Telling it over and over helps you to hear it over and over and will assist your moving to other stages along the road towards mental and emotional health and healing, in due time.

Avoid people who lightly say
“It’s time to put this into your past.”
“Pull yourself together.”
“Let me give you a sedative.” (Unless that is what YOU want to assist you temporarily)
“You know he/she wouldn’t have wanted you to grieve like this.”
“Get over it.”

You are unique. Your grieving will be unique.
Allow yourself to be genuine and safe as you experience your own grieving this time.
Next time you need to do the work of grieving, it will be different again.

Create your support team who will be with you as you to grieve honestly and openly and uniquely, and to make your own progress in your own particular way.

Grieving is natural, and so are its manifestations, every single time.

“A terrible thing has happened. To make the matter worse, there is no (complete) explanation as to why the event happened. What are you supposed to feel? Happiness? Joy? Thankfulness? How are you supposed to react? With bursts of faith? With a carrying on as if nothing happened? No. You have been deeply hurt. You should therefore hurt deeply. One day you will feel better. One day you will live again. Right now you are wounded. No explanation in the world will make the wound go away. You feel a thousand why’s – ask them all. You have a million feelings – feel them all.”

From Robert McKay – UNISA