Working through grief
Put simply, grief (also called bereavement) is the experience of loss. And experience is the right term for it as it is not a finite or straightforward event. We put grief in the living on and celebration of life section because we feel it is a continual expression of love, even as painful and heart-wrenching as it can be. As Marisa Renee Lee says beautifully in her book Grief is Love, “love doesn’t end when they die, you don’t have to get over it…Love endures forever.”
“Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on- in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”
- Morrie Schwarz in Tuesdays with Morrie
Grief is complicated. Grief is normal. It is the unfortunate side effect of loving people. It’s more than okay to be really sad. And to feel a whole plethora of feelings, for as long as you need. Pressure to get over it or get back to how you were before should be ignored as you figure out the right way through grief and to live with it for yourself.
In her moving book The Year of Magical Thinking, the lyrical Joan Didion says, “Grief when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”
From all we know, there is no singular way to grieve. Much has been written about the stages of grief but they are not necessarily linear and everyone needs to work through grief and learn to live with it in their own way.
In Megan Devine’s wonderful read, It’s Ok that You're Not Ok, she reiterates there’s nothing wrong with grief. And calls out a helpful shift in mindset from trying to fix our pain to tending to it. Offering compassion for ourselves and others as we go through this natural extension of love. (You can learn more about Devine’s work on her site Refuge in Grief and she also has a podcast Here After.)
We also love how the actor Andrew Garfield spoke of the ache we feel when we lose someone. In speaking of the passing of his mother on the Stephen Colbert Show he said, “I love talking about her, by the way, so if I cry, it’s only a beautiful thing. This is all the unexpressed love, the grief that will remain with us until we pass because we never get enough time with each other, no matter if someone lives till 60, 15, or 99.” You can watch the full interview here.
Similarly, Anderson Cooper’s new podcast ‘All There Is’ explores grief through love. He interviews different celebrities who have been through loss. It is a heart-wrenching, but an equally beautiful listen.
So grief is a process, a prolonged state made up with many different feelings. And we need to feel them to work through them.
In Grief is Love, Lee suggests, “truly feel your feelings, being attentive to the hardest and messiest parts of grief is what makes it easier to live with loss.” She quotes grief researcher Dr. Dorothy Hollinger who states that naming the feelings and emotions that are overwhelming can help control the power of them and lessen their intensity.
Some ideas to work through grief:
Allow yourself to feel and express your emotions, rather than bottling them up
Talk to friends and family or a therapist about everything you are feeling (you can find an inclusive therapist HERE)
Find healthy outlets for your emotions, such as writing, art, and exercise
Practice self-care like getting enough sleep, eating well, and taking care of your physical health
Remember and honour the person or thing you lost in a way that is meaningful to you
Be patient with yourself and allow yourself to grieve in your own way and in your own time
Dr Mary-Frances O’Connor, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and author of The Grieving Brain, suggests in The Guardian that traditions are also important. “Mourning rituals can offer constancy and comfort in a moment when everything can feel very uncertain,” she said. “By connecting us to rituals that have existed for hundreds of years, we are reminded that those who came before us have experienced grief and uncertainty, and they have carried on and restored meaningful lives.”
Similarly, Charlene Lam believes that grief can be meaningfully processed through art and design and helps people by curating some of the meaningful objects in their lives through her work The Grief Gallery.
Grief is an unfortunate part of this shared human experience. “If we commit to loving, we will inevitably know loss and grief. If we try to avoid loss and grief we will never truly love,” says poet and philosopher Mark Nepo in the forward to It’s Ok that You're Not Ok. “Yet powerfully and mysteriously, knowing both love and loss is what brings us fully and deeply alive.”
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