Ten Lessons Worth Learning About Grief
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I stride into Target on a mission: to buy a bag of craisins.
But barricading my path into the store stand huge banners announcing “For Your Mom” and “Mother’s Day!” As if big bright signs can make impossible dreams come true.
I start to sob, startling myself and scattering innocent bystanders.
Later, I text this photo to Kathi with the message, “One of the things they need to teach in Grief 101.”
Grief 101
The most important life skill I’ve never learned ’til now is how to grieve.
In fact, I’ve spent my life running from pain and disappointment only to discover, at middle age, that they are two of the great constants on a fallen planet.
Which makes me wonder: If grief, pain, and disappointment are so prevalent, why was I never taught how to grieve somewhere along the way?”
Hoping for a crash course, I ask my Bravery Buddies, “If you were invited to guest lecture for Grief 101, what one (or two or three…!) specifics would you want to share?”
10 Lessons Worth Learning
Lesson #1 — Don’t put off grief because others are depending on you to be strong. (PW)
Lesson #2 — Remember that grieving takes a lot of energy and brain power. (TW)
Lesson #3 — Don’t be afraid when a rough moment hits you like a Mack truck. There will be days that it is as fresh as when your loss happened. (ED)
Lesson #4 — Grief and love are the same thing. I won’t stop loving that person. I won’t stop grieving that person. It will look different over time, but I won’t get over the grief because I will not get over loving them. (KL)
Lesson #5 — Don’t expect yourself to grieve a certain way. There’s no right way to do it. Let yourself feel all the emotions as fully as you can handle and find healthy ways to cope with them (may take research, reaching out to others, and/or just seeing what works.) (TW)
Lesson #6 — Grief does not have to be the result of a death. It can also come from the loss of a hope and dream for a child, knowing life will never be the same and will never go back to the way it was. You’re not going crazy and you need to give yourself permission to grieve since you may have not lost that child but you lost a piece of that future with that child. (SN)
Lesson #7 — Manage your grief. Make a routine appointment with yourself to grieve, first on a daily basis, then weekly, and eventually monthly. If you need to grieve, you cry, moan, yell, drop to the ground face first—whatever YOU do to grieve—at the appointed time. If you walk into Target and feel like you are about to explode, remind yourself that you can grieve later at “7:30 pm after the kids go to bed” or whenever you have appointed your grief time. It will help you pull your sh*t together in public places. It only works if you keep your appointments. If you don’t feel like your grieving at the appointed time, don’t. Count that as healing. If you are done in 2 minutes stop. If it takes all night, take all night. I lost my mom over 40 years ago. I still use this message when I go through the anniversary of her death, her birthday, and Mothers’ Day. (CM)
Lesson #8 — It’s OK to be mad at God. He can handle it, and letting that happen allows Him to bring healing. (EG)
Lesson #9 — Allow yourself to let other things go while your spirit copes with the loss. (TW)
Lesson #10 — Unexpected beauty and joy come from grief. Highly Recommended: Allison Fallon’s new blog post “10 Incredible Benefits of a Broken Heart.”
Your Turn
What have you learned about grief? What would you add to the list?
This was a really fantastic post. Thanks to you and your friends for sharing their tips. I just lost my mom in November. I was one of her primary caretakers and she wasn’t just a mother she was my dearest friend in many ways. The level of grief i have is part of why I started to seek out this label “empath” and HSP. I’m so glad I found this website.
Hi, fellow Hope*Writer! I’m thrilled to have found your blog. I signed up for your email series and cried just reading the introductory email! I’m relaunching my own blog very soon and I write about similar things. I get so excited when I find other writers who speak my language.
And this post was great. I lost my dad on Mother’s Day two years ago. The details of what happened are horrific and I have managed to compartmentalize my pain without processing it. Trying to go back and open that up is incredibly difficult, but I know it will hit me later if I don’t. All of these points resonated with me. Anyway, thank you for this post and for sharing your story so openly. I’ll be following your blog and looking forward to reading more from you!
My mother-in-law just passed away 2 weeks ago, so these lessons will be helpful as I help my husband grieve. Thank you, all who shared what you have learned through your losses! I pray that God comforts your heart anew each time the grief comes fresh.
Grief is involuntary. Wallowing is a choice you don’t have to make. I told my kids after their dad died that grief demands to be dealt with. If they didn’t let it do it’s work now, it would force them later. However, life doesn’t stop. So if they had a bad grief day, I would come get them from school but we’d try again tomorrow. After a while, I’d only come get them for a class period to cry and talk and maybe get a slushie. Then they’d go back to finish the day. It worked.
Our twenty one year old son passed away in 2001. I’d sometimes find myself crying in public. I finally had some business sized cards printed up. I’d give to people in shock at seeing me crying. The cards said something like this “Just give me a moment. My son passed away and something I saw reminded me of him. I’ll be fine.” I passed out a few. People were kind.
Now after all these years the tears are less because I know that Jesus is coming soon!! And we’ll be seeing Mathew!
The pain of the loss of our son was horrendous. It didn’t help that our birthdays were all around the same time. My birthday is 2/18, Mathew’s is 2/22, he died seven days later on March 1, 2001. My husbands birthday is March 5 and the funeral was the 6th. The first few years after his death we could not celebrate.
We didn’t know how we were going to celebrate the first Thanksgiving without him. For the past 21 plus years we had always gone to my mother in law’s. The counselor told us “do something different!” Really? We could do that? So we decided to go to North Carolina where my sis in law was living. But after the family found out what we were doing, they all flew out too. It was different, but the same.
Nobody wants to hear “time will heal all wounds” at the beginning of your pain, but it does.
Looking forward to seeing him again.
Lesson #11: Don’t be surprised if you can’t make decisions around the anniversary of your tragedy. After the death of my mom I went about my normal routine. Then the month of her death a year later, I found myself unable to think clearly, to make decisions, to function normally. I was surprised by this phenomenon, but a friend told me that it had happened to her as well, and that it was a normal part of grieving. Some losses render a harsh anniversary, some losses don’t cause quite as much of a stir. What happened in one tragedy won’t necessarily happen in another.