Grief: Over Coming and Supporting others

I was sitting here trying to figure out the best thing to talk about for this week and I ended up thinking about loss and grief and about how it can be so difficult to overcome, but how necessary it is to overcome.

Over these past few years there have been many instances of grief and loss around the world. While this is true about life any other time, it is especially more prevalent during years when an active pandemic is present. I’m not going to go into talking about the science about the pandemic and what view points people should have or not have, but I am here to talk about something I’m willing to bet everyone experiences during these times of uncertainty, Grief and loss.

So, what is grief?

 On a webpage https://familydoctor.org/grieving-facing-illness-death-and-other-losses/  it is stated that Grief itself is “a person’s normal, healthy response to a loss”. This is indeed true. People need to grieve in order to process all of the complicated emotions and body sensations that happen when they experience a loss. If a person doesn’t properly grieve a loss there are even more negative consequences than what is caused by the grieving process alone.

 Many people know about the five stages of grief, but for the people who don’t know, they are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It should be noted that this is not seen as the current way grief works, at least not for everyone. This model of grief was made in the 60s and it has since been shown that not everyone experiences grief the same way. There is a famous British psychiatrist, Colin Murray Parkes came up with a four stage model of grief based on the work regarding emotional attachment between parents and children done by John Bowlby (very well known Psychologist). The four stages are shock and numbness, yearning and searching, despair and disorganization, and reorganization and recovery. If you want to know more about the 5 stages or four stage models or grief, the very well mind explained it  pretty clearly. You can check their blog out at https://www.verywellmind.com/five-stages-of-grief-4175361

One thing not everyone does know is that grief can be triggered by more than the physical death of a loved one. There are many different types of losses while the death of a loved one is a type of loss, there is also things like the ending of a relationship of any sort (romantic, family relationship or friend ship), the loss of a sense of safety and security (such as after a crime, natural disaster, loss of a place to stay or your home, children experiencing divorce,  or security in a relationship such as after a partner’s affair), there is the loss of identity ( such as from loss of a job/demotion at work, loss of the role of spouse, loss of the role of parenthood when children grow up and leave home), the loss of fellowship after leaving a religious or other group or institution, the loss of personal autonomy due to things like from a disability or old age, the loss of a long held dream such as having a baby or what you felt was your dream job, and even the loss of a celebrity that you deeply looked up to or idolized. There are so many different situations that could lead to a person feeling like they’ve experienced a loss that they need to go through the grieving process over, and every single one of those losses is valid and needs to be addressed in a healthy way to prevent very negative consequences.

My own grief and losses and how I’m managing them.

I myself, Have experienced a great deal of loss in many different forms throughout my life, even things at the time I didn’t realize were the kinds of losses that could cause grief. I guess you could say I’ve been grieving over one thing or another for my whole life. I know there are many times I have handled my grief in maladaptive ways, and I can’t even tell if I have been grieving a healthy amount or not because of how many things I have had to grieve from. I can say that at this present moment, and due to a different number of events and mental health work I have been doing, I do not currently at the time of writing this feel that I am still grieving any of my past losses and a lot of that healing actually just came at the end of the past year. My life is far from perfect, but for now I feel on top of my positivity and the cycle of grief has not come back for me yet. I find it is easier to trust that someone knows what they are talking about if they provide some information about themselves regarding the topic they are talking about and since everyone deals with loss at some point and since I have delt with it before and am currently in recovery from it, I am going to talk a little bit about the types of losses and grieving I have done, then follow it up with some possible strategies to help you either get to a better place from your own grief, or to help someone else who is grieving.

One could say my first experience with grief was when my birth mom left my birth dad with me when I was one, as our family then got broken up and my life changed dramatically, but I don’t remember that time so any affect it had on me is all going on subconsciously and not something I can touch. After that moment my life was full of different hardships. I lost my position as the only child my mom had when I gained an abusive stepfather and two brothers from their relationship. again, I don’t remember most of that just some of the abuse from my stepfather and never feeling completely safe again. The first real instance of grief I can remember is completely losing my sense of safety is at 7 when one of my much older cousins raped me and nothing was done about it, I was told to sweep it under the rug and forced to grieve all alone. Then again when I was 9 and another cousin started abuse over a course of the next several years until I was finally able to get it to stop when I was 15. It took me a long time to realize my early sexual abuse was a real loss because I had pushed it down for so long. It’s so hard to say if my other situations of loss of safety and security were ever truly grieved because from the time I was 2 until I was 15 and a half my whole life was full of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as well as severe neglect, situations of resource instability and insecurity, constant school, church, and friend changes from moving so much, and loss of my connection to my birth family through foster care, adoption, and setting boundaries with abusive family. Even as an adult I have felt the loss of family and romantic relationships both because of setting boundaries, and because my romantic relationships don’t tend to work out. I have experienced a loss of functioning from disability and a break down, a loss of certain goals and dreams and a loss of physical and mental health with the addition of changes such as mental illness, and type two diabetes with cholesterol issues. I have also experienced the more traditional losses that everyone has which are the losses of loved ones through death.

When I was 10 I had my first traditional experience of loss from the loss of a loved one when I lost my grandfather. He was my birth mom’s father and one of the only people in my family who never abused or neglected me. We were so close all of the times that we were living close to each other, but he got sick with Leukemia and passed away while I was living several states away after an argument he and my mom had. With him I never got the closure of goodbye, and at the time I didn’t realize he was dead since at the funeral I didn’t see a body, just a cremation urn. I just thought he went away somewhere. It took about two years for the grieving to kick in at which time I started crying hysterically, my mom accused me of not caring about him, and I yelled at her and shoved a bunch of poems I had written about him in her face. From that day when I was 12 and started grieving, not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of him. It generally gets especially hard on holidays and the month of November when it was both his death and birthdays and the month we had his funeral. Though for the past few years the month has not caused me to have severely extreme reactions.

Many of the other traditional losses were in my adoptive family. They were mostly elderly relatives such as my great great aunt and uncle though one was a teenage boy that was staying with my grandmother, one was my great uncle who died from a preexisting condition at a relatively young age, and one was a friend of my mother’s who had cancer. All of those deaths and funerals I went though did touch me in a way, and I definitely grieved them at their funerals, even though they did not compare to the loss of my grandfather. Last year I had two deaths in my family, one relative who passed from the virus, and one who also touched me in a similar but different way that my grandfather’s death did, that was his wife, my birth mom’s mother.

The death of my grandmother is actually what helped me get relief from my grief. The thing about my grandmother is that she was one of my abusers as a child and so for a long time we weren’t talking at all. She would always talk to my brother who got adopted with me, but she would barely ever talk to me. Then as an adult for years we didn’t talk until I learned that she was sick with cancer and I tried to call her but her throat hurt so she couldn’t talk long. After that I had kept up with how she was doing from the brother I have that lived with her at the time, but did not actually talk to her. Sometime around six months ago, I got a call that she was in the hospital in my town and that she only had weeks to live. At the time I had started doing family history research and had a plan to get closure with her and ask her some questions, but when I got to the hospital it was clear she was in no shape to answer questions, so in that moment I lost my chance for full closure and family history information from her point of view because she would never be fit to answer questions again. I did spend every day for the rest of her life visiting her and with my birth family, even members that I had cut off for safety reasons (but only while she was alive and after her funeral).

That was all tremendously emotional and a great loss, but after her death I decided to start writing a memoir about the ways the lives and deaths of her and my grandfather had affected me I only got half way through before I had to put it down for being too emotional, but It did actually help with my grieving process and added another loss at the same time. I lost the way I had always seen my grandfather when I learned that he was not as perfect as I had come to believe he was. While I still believe he was an amazing person, he had flaws I never knew about as a kid, and once that I didn’t learn about until after doing my family research. This same lose I felt at realizing my grandfather wasn’t perfect, created a path for me to find some type of closure with my grandmother. At the same time I had been putting him on a pedestal, I had been demonizing my grandmother who was usually always angry at me.

The research I was doing for my memoir, helped me realize that she was just a human being who was suffering from some mental health issues and never had the chance to get help for these issues. She also made mistakes that everyone can make and she experienced such intense emotions that even she didn’t understand.  For some reason after I came to a sense of peace with her passing I felt a strong sense of calm, like a big source of tension had been lessened, and I think that was all the grief about everything I have been feeling, because as I think about things now, I have not been feeling the strong effects of grief and loss that I had been feeling before then.

A few months after my grandma’s death there was another loss only this time in my adoptive family. I am not going to talk about that one too much because it is very recent and people in the family are still grieving from it. But what I will say is it was shocking since it was the first personal death I’ve experienced due to covid and I hadn’t seen this person in years. There are others in the family who have been very shaken by these events and I am still trying to be their support system so they may get relief from grief as well.

If you have stuck by me for this long, then thanks for listening and I hope my story has helped show you that you are not alone in your grief and maybe something I’ve said can help you deal with your own grief and feelings of loss. I am now going to take the time to talk to you about possible ways you can heal from a sense of loss and how you may be able to support others going through grief too.

Grief is different for everyone, everyone has different ways that their losses will affect them. For me, my losses made me shut down, my grief lasted too long and it became unhealthy turning into depression. Here are some good ways to help you handle your grief in a way that will make it less likely that your grief will turn unhealthy.

First off you should know that there is no normal amount of time that grief affects us; it could be months or years and it could pop back up at special moments like holidays or milestones like graduations or if you lost someone close to you like a significant other it can be milestones like your child’s first school dance, or birthday or something like that. Even if you heal from your grief, the memory of the loss may continue to be upsetting. All of this is why it is first and foremost important to not judge yourself for grieving longer than “normal” even if it seems that others have moved on. We don’t really know what they are going through in their hearts.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to find people to connect with who actually know what it feels like to experience the loss you are feeling and who will be nonjudgmental for the grief you are going through. While everyone either has gone through or will go through the experience of grief, there are many people who don’t know the right way to handle grief, especially in a society where we are taught to stay busy and move on quickly. There are so many people who have never gotten the benefit of fully feeling and healing from their grief. There are many different types of support groups available both around the U.S. at least and online for different types of grief and loss, such as groups for people affected by the suicide of a loved one, the loss of a loved one due to illnesses like cancer and other such groups. There may also be good people you know in your own life who have felt similar things that you may be feeling who will keep you company without burdening you with extra expectations or troubles. Another good idea is to speak with your primary care doctor about the grief you are going through that way they can help you monitor any changes in your habits so you don’t start developing harmful ones which could worsen your health.

The next piece of advice I can give is try to find a balanced routine to get into which includes time for extra rest to help combat the physical and emotional exhaustion that can come with grieving, while also making sure you go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day so you don’t spend all of your time sleeping. If you spend all your time sleeping there is no chance you will recover from your grief and depression is more likely to set in. In regards to balanced routine it will help if you do things like get at least some physical activity which is preferably done outside for maximum affect. Also make sure you are taking care of your self everyday by grooming or dressing yourself even if you are no going anywhere and eat small regular meals even if it doesn’t feel like you are hungry. All of this will help you stay nourished and physically healthy while providing energy to do the difficult work of moving through the grieving process.

During your time grieving all different kinds of emotions are going to come up, maybe even with multiple emotions being felt at the same time. It is important that you don’t try to stuff these emotions down or try to not feel them. Also try not to judge yourself for having any of these emotions and try not to dwell on any of them for too long. Let the emotions come and pass. Using some type of mindfulness practices will be the best at helping you do this. When practicing mindfulness it is easier to regulate your emotions, but during this process it is also important to keep an eye on when you need some professional help too.

Try to do things to keep hope alive. Do things like setting small and manageable goals to work on, make a list each day of things you need to get done to help combat the forgetfulness that often comes with bereavement. Don’t make any really major decisions or changes that you have not fully thought out and that you may regret later.

Try to do things that add to your life in a powerful way that helps you keep a sense of meaning and purpose. For some people that’s through things like spiritual practice, for some people its through the service of others, and for other people its through creative outlets like through creating things like music, poems or other written works, even something like journaling or writing a letter to the loved one that my have passed. If you are not grieving a loved one, you can still write a letter. Like if you lost your job you can write a letter of what you wished you could have said to your former boss or coworkers, if you loose a relationship you can write a letter to yourself or that other person in the relationship about all of your feelings and maybe even all of the good things that will come from the end of the relationship. It’s important to note that you don’t have to share these letters with anyone, you don’t even have to keep them; you could tear them up or even burn them, the point is to get your feelings and unsaid words all out so they don’t hurt you anymore.

Now is the part where I want to give you advice about how to help a loved one grieve, but the thing is I am in a situation right now where I need to be there for someone who is grieving, but I have absolutely no idea how I can help as this person who passed was one person’s mother and one person’s sister. I’ve never lost either a mother or sister, and there are some very unusual situations involved with this passing. Through doing some research though, I have found a great article from Harvard health. That is actually going to be useful for me and I would encourage you all to check it out here at  https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/ways-to-support-someone-who-is-grieving