The title alone may have made you hesitant to continue reading, I get it. When we think about grief what comes to mind? Me? I think about wailing, moaning, sobbing, weeping, tearing at your clothes. Basically, I think about what Hollywood has created grieving to be, or what I’ve observed watching the news. Grieving is usually associated with what people do when someone they love or care about dies. Absent death, most of us don’t think about grieving, much less talk about grief. And yet, grief is complex and exists on a multitude of levels we may not otherwise contemplate. I wonder why we don’t talk about grief?
Where does grief reside?
18. The age when I first experienced death in my family of someone close and the subsequent grief. My grandfather died unexpectedly and receiving the news on the rotary wall phone in my dorm room in my freshman year in college, I collapsed to the floor. My legs unable to sustain my body. I felt the loss deep in my body, in my gut and the pain persisted for weeks. But your skin gets thicker through life and though I could trace the reasons, I’ve learned to hold grief I’m experiencing inside.
Tightly wound around what may otherwise be a molten center, my emotions are ready to ooze out and flatten all in their path. I am well familiar with the tightening of my gut and deep inhalation. And for as many tears as fell from my blue eyes over the years, they have been dry the past few. Atypically dry, perhaps even abnormally so. But do I talk about it? Of course not. Nope. Because I’m an adult now and it’s my job to handle my business…read that and other lies I’ve told myself in the upcoming series of the same name…not really, but I could (and couldn’t we all?)
What is grief?
Our good friend Merriam Webster defines grief as:
1a: deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement
b: a cause of such suffering life’s joys and griefs
I’d argue that Webster’s definition is a starting point. The multiple levels of grief push the bounds of a simple definition because when “…experience change, something has to die.” These words by Brené Brown have stuck with me because I would not have included change as a cause of grieving, certainly wouldn’t have caused me to talk about grief. Through observation though, I know it’s true.
And I can see it coming.
We can have grief within otherwise joyful experiences
Right around the corner, I’m moving from the city in which I’ve lived for 9 years across the county. I’ll be close to a larger portion of my family and that brings me great joy. It’s a both/and situation. I feel both joy at the closeness to family and impending grief at leaving a place where I’ve lived at lot of life. I’ll leave treasured friends. A state I was born and raised in and which – contrary to many – still love. A house which…if these walls could talk, boy howdy, they’d make the talk show rounds.
I’m joyful and anticipatorily grieving at the same time. Two opposite things can be true simultaneously.
When we experience grief, we need to recognize it for what it is
Our tendency is to rush past grief, but the risk is allowing pieces of it to lodge in our soul and continue to fester. Brené shared in this article about healing through grief:
“We run from grief because loss scares us,
yet our hearts reach toward grief
because the broken parts want to mend.”
We may not consciously want to recognize our grieving, but our bodies do. He or she tells you, deep inside, how you’re feeling. And that needs to be mended. We can make steps towards healing our grief by acknowledging it’s there. Talking about grief.
Grief is not limited to death of a body. Grief includes the death of an idea, a dream, a situation, a relationship, a season of life. Grieving can include embracing the joy you experienced, grief you’re feeling and giving it a place to be seen rather than rushing by with blinders on hoping to escape it. If you don’t want to talk about it, write it down, perhaps for no one else but you. “Writing helps you metabolize your life,” Allison Fallon – The Power of Writing it Down.
No one escapes change or loss and the subsequent grief. As much as we’d like to deny it. You may have experienced loss in multitudes of ways. So, how can you grieve? How can you ‘mend your broken parts’? As I drive away from this house in less than two weeks, I will grieve. And…I will talk about my grief. We’re not on the journey alone and need to process our collective emotions – together. Be there for you and be there for your friends. Both/and…joy and grief. Be Brave. Lisa