“Well, everyone can master grief ‘cept he that has it.” – William Shakespeare
It seems easy for others to tell you what to do when you have just suffered a great loss or are coming out of a relationship. Everyone has advice. Keep busy. Don’t think about it. There’s plenty of fish in the sea. You’ll be fine. etc etc etc.
It is not only hard, during this time, to hear people but to make any kind of assessment about the advice they are giving. Grief brings with it a distorted view of the world and an inability to process things correctly. There is a “fuzzy-headness” that is an inherent part of grief and a
lack of decisiveness. This is all part of the “working through” nature of grief. The mind and body are focusing its energy on working through this shock to the system. It is almost impossible to process new information or to be in one’s “right” mind.
Grief must run its course otherwise it becomes an unresolved loss and the consequences of that are many. Unresolved losses stay with us and make us afraid to face loss again. We hold on, stubbornly, to that which we should let go. When we do experience another loss, it is magnified because all the unresolved losses come rushing to the surface. Then we repress that one as well.
Unresolved loss narrows our life scope. We cannot love and we cannot bear to lose when we have all these losses piling up in us. We cannot deal with how much “it” will hurt when the object of our affection leaves us. Even when the object of our affection is actively hurting us. We think the pain of the loss will be greater than the day-to-day indignities we suffer.
It is important to understand that grief is important and the grief process is important and that most people, well-meaning or not, have NO idea what you should do to work through it.
The important thing is that you give yourself time to hurt and to heal. It is important to not try to stop the process. Let it happen. Deal with the pain and the sorrow and the sleeplessness, the fuzzy-headness, the ache and the emptiness. Let it happen. Grief has to be “worked through” meaning that you have to allow the process and even help it along. When it is done, it is done.
Journal. Talk to friends. Find a support group. Go through the process. Take one or two nights a week to be good to yourself. Go out or stay in but give yourself a break from your suffering. Read books on grief such as A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis or The Grief Recovery Handbook by John James and Russell Friedman.
You can also read other books that do not have anything to do with grief but talk about relationships in general. When you are grieving you can absorb newer concepts in a way you can’t when you are not grieving. Although you feel as if your head is not clear, it is also true that your regular defenses are down and you might be open to new and beneficial ways of thinking and doing things. Read books on having a healthy relationship, having good boundaries, taking care of yourself. Even if you don’t think you are understanding or absorbing what you are reading, you are.
Know that everyone feels their pain at 100 percent. Don’t allow someone to tell you when you “should” feel better or why this should not hurt as much as it does. This pain belongs to you and you alone. When you work through this loss, you will not have the whole bag of unresolved loss to carry around.
Know that one day it will not hurt. At all. Know that one day you will accept the loss as “it was what it was.” Know that your friends and relatives might mean well when they give (unsolicited) advice, but the goal of grief is to get through it, not to avoid it. And to be good to yourself in the meantime and come out of the experience a “more whole” not “less whole” person.
