Happy New Year. You may be asking yourself why an article written for the first day of a new calendar year would be about grief. The answer to that question is twofold. First, as is typical for me, this article is the result of a collision between my personal life and professional life. I personally experienced a large loss this year through the death of my father. This experience is giving me a deeper understanding of what the process of grieving is all about. Second, through my own grieving process, I have come to realize how anchored every life is in loss and how many aspects of our culture are unsupportive of the conditions required for healthy grief and mourning to take place. The reality is that anytime we start something new, we are inevitably saying goodbye to what came before; life, like the seasons of a year, is constantly shifting. One season inevitably turns into the next, and although each season will return again the following year, it will never be exactly the same. So too it is with other losses in life, both large and small. Sometimes we respond to loss by feeling sad that something is ending (e.g., summer is over); other times we try to handle what is in front of us by looking forward to when it will be over (e.g., looking forward to spring while experiencing winter). The key is that both the end of what was and the beginning of what follows have feelings associated with them. Acknowledging both parts is necessary if we are to truly integrate any loss into our lives moving forward. The purpose of this article is to talk about the process that loss takes us through, whether the loss is large like the loss of a parent, or smaller like the end of a year. If we are clear about the purposes grief and mourning have in our life, we will be better equipped to support ourselves and those we love through the process.
Culturally, we tend to use the words grief and mourning interchangeably, but this is actually not correct. Dr. Alan Wolfelt (2014) defines the difference as follows: grief is the constellation of internal thoughts and feelings we have in response to a loss, whereas mourning happens as you take the grief you experience on the inside and express it outside yourself, sometimes referred to as “grief gone public.” Mourning requires that we be consciously aware of the painful emotions of grief. As we give expression to these feelings, the intensity of the emotion fades and we find a way, eventually, to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the process of life is continuing to move forward.
To give a simple example, I was talking with a friend the other day who was sharing some thoughts about her daughter’s sad feelings one Sunday evening because she had to go back to school the next day. This friend had suggested to her daughter in a tongue-and-cheek manner that perhaps they should make their family weekends a little less fun so that it wouldn’t be so hard to go back to school on Mondays. Her daughter, of course, declined this solution to her sad feelings. To think about not having fun on the weekend so Monday is easier hardly seems worth it. Our life would become boring and dull. What this example illustrates is that part of the price we pay in life for experiencing joy, fun, and love is the shift of that present-day experience to a less tangible form (e.g. memory of things past). That shift often comes with sad feelings. It is okay to feel sad that a fun weekend has come to an end. Sharing that sadness with someone is the process of mourning, and that mourning process is what allows us to reconcile ourselves to the start of the upcoming week. The experience after the loss of a loved one is not different than this, just more magnified and intense, so it takes much longer. I can’t even imagine who I might be today if I had tried to love my dad less so that the pain of losing him wouldn’t be so great.
As with anything in life, our task is to descend into the difficult feelings before we can hope to transcend them. In order for this to happen, the feelings require a sense of safety or welcome (Dr. Wolfelt refers to this as befriending the pain) and your full attention. While processing the feelings after a fun weekend is likely doable with a little support from your friends, processing the feelings associated with a death or even a really difficult year may require a different level of skill. Our instinct with pain is often to try to control or avoid it. Underneath this instinct is fear: the fear of what will happen if we lose control over our ability to hold back the feelings. I have yet to meet anyone who likes the sense of being overcome by waves of grief and sorrow. The grief we experience, no matter how large or small, transforms us; we do not return to a prior state of “normal.” However, as Dr. Wolfelt points out, mourning is what makes it possible for us to experience, eventually, a sense of renewed meaning and purpose for our life. Unless we understand this, experiencing the pain of grief can appear to be quite pointless.
What I can tell you for sure is that there is no way around the feelings associated with grief and mourning. When the feelings are small, you can try to push them aside but you will pay a price if you avoid feeling them. If we don’t mourn well, we don’t love well. We end up moving through life protecting ourselves from the pain of any further loss. In order to do this, we end up “protecting” ourselves from love too. At its core, even in the depths of what feels like unbearable pain, grief is evidence of having given and received love. Some say grief is the form love takes when something we love is gone. In the end, where the capacity to love and be loved has been before, it can be again if we work to grieve, mourn and eventually reconcile ourselves to the new normal that is our life post-loss.
So, as you look forward to 2015, don’t forget to also take the time to look back at 2014 and take stock of the ups and downs, the additions and losses. Although life is lived forward (chronologically), it is typically understood and given meaning backward. Without taking the time to pause and integrate the lessons we have learned over the last year’s experiences we are prone to making the same mistakes again. And without truly attending to the feelings attached to those experiences we run the risk of moving through the next year in a manner that protects us from pain but also from joy.
If you are experiencing a loss in your life, no matter how big or small, please know that grief, mourning and reconciliation are all a part of the process. Should you find yourself struggling or in need of a compassionate listening ear during the mourning process, please consider calling and booking an appointment.