A LOT of people ask how long grief will last, when will it finally be over.
When will the pain end?
How we answer those questions depends upon how we approach grief and the recovery process caused by the grieving experience. The recovery process should lead to completion of grief.
How we handle the fallout of loss and the accompanying pain is what’s important.
Because if we don’t handle the loss well, it can lead to incomplete grief.
And that’s the important subject we’ll be exploring for the next few weeks.
What’s really behind all that grief pain?
When you’re deep into grief, unspeakable pain is your constant companion. No matter what you do, it seldom lets up. You just know the pain is never going to go away; you’re going to have to live with this the rest of your life.
If someone tries to tell you things will eventually get better, you don’t see how that’s possible. You don’t believe them. And you may be angered that they even made the comment.
It’s true, though. Things do and will get better—if you can identify the sources of emotional energy contributing to all that pain.
While there are some deaths—like grandparents, friends, and even siblings—that we can rebound better and more quickly from, other deaths leave us paralyzed and stuck.
The key is asking the right questions to identify what’s causing the emotions and then providing answers to those questions.
Key grief recovery questions—
We all look back over relationships and ask ourselves internal questions about them. The answers can help us complete the grief healing process.
One key question to ask yourself is:
What makes this death or loss different from others?
Was there something about the relationship that made it special? Was there “unfinished business” that will never be completed?
And we can go further with other important questions, like:
- Are there things you wished would have been different about the relationship?
- What could have been better?
- Was there something more you would have liked to see fulfilled?
In my case, in the death of my daughter during an emergency delivery in the fifth month of pregnancy, I had a lot of emotions.
I’d spent five months with my daughter as she grew in my body, feeling her move. And I was seriously ill with morning sickness soon after the beginning of the pregnancy—so ill I couldn’t keep food down and had to undergo home IV therapy and intra-muscular anti-nausea treatment shots.
But I recovered from that and was just starting to enjoy the second trimester when tragedy struck, and our precious Victoria had to be taken too soon to survive outside my womb.
For a little over five months, I’d focused on my growing baby, wondering about what the baby would be like. Wondering if the little one was a boy or girl. Dreaming. Making plans. Mentally designing the nursery.
Then one night it all abruptly ended. My dreams and hopes were snatched away.
One of the things I wrote on the death announcements I sent out was: “Our dreams are certainly going to miss her—“
And that’s where I could have started the grief recovery process, writing down what I wished had been different, better or more.
Of course, I wish it didn’t turn out the way it did. That Victoria wouldn’t have died, or I would have been able to carry her further into the pregnancy and given her a better chance at life.
I wish I had better medical care. That the doctors would have responded to my concerns and to the concern of the ultrasound technician who picked up the problem during an examination. I wish they had been more concerned about the baby and me than the money they were trying to make and save.
I wish I could have had more time with her after her birth.
Victoria’s death had abruptly ended my hopes, dreams and expectations for our life together, as mother and daughter, and for our family’s life as a foursome. It killed my dreams of having a little girl to dress in frilly dresses and hair pinned into pigtails.
It’s important to remember that all these questions are critical to explore because hopes, dreams, and expectations happen in all relationships—even relationships that struggled or fell short; the ones that weren’t so great.
When we speak of grief, and grief recovery, we need to use these grief recovery terms:
“different, better, more;” and
“broken hopes, dreams, and expectations.”
They need to become part of our grief recovery language.
Communicating your grief—
When you’re first thrown into the grieving process, the emotions and myriad of them seem overwhelming and suffocating. You don’t know what to do with all the painful, sometimes incoherent thoughts.
In order to heal and recover, we need to be able to identify and communicate what’s going on within us. What the source is behind those complex feelings and thoughts.
When we do that, we gain control and reclaim a sense of purpose in life.
We can say to ourselves: I know how I feel. Now what do I need to do about it?
And that’s what we’ll be exploring in the next several weeks of posts.
What we can do about those feelings.
Invitation—
- Is there any grief you feel you haven’t worked through or fully recovered from? Would it help to ask these questions we’ve covered today:
What feelings am I experiencing about this grief and why?
What makes this loss different from others I’ve experienced?
What do I wish would have been different?
What could have been better?
What did I want more of?
I encourage you to start exploring those questions and jotting down answers to them. You might be surprised at what you learn, and what relief you gain from the process and learning.
I encourage you to explore and ask yourself these questions. To become actively engaged in moving forward into grief recovery.
NEXT WEEK we’ll look at incomplete grief, what it is and how to avoid living with it.
Until then, remember that the grief process is normal, and that there can be a full life on the other side of it.
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.