Grief, Loss, and Transitions

Grief visits us all.

There are many causes of our grief and as many ways to grieve as there are people.

Someone we love dies. Even if we knew it was coming, and so often we didn’t, we can’t quite believe that person is gone, except when we do, and the pain is horrendous. Perhaps we were with them through a last illness or slow decline and carry, too, the complex feelings of caregiving.

The life we thought we had is ripped away – due to illness, divorce, breakup, or unexpected changes in career or life roles for ourselves or someone we care for. There is sorrow, anger, confusion, anxiety, and disbelief.

Whatever the cause, we cannot escape the hurt in body, heart, and mind. Even when the loss is from a change we wanted – becoming a parent, moving to a new place, starting a new life path – there are all the other possibilities and prior ways of being we leave behind that may need grieving, too.

But grief also leaves us feeling so alone.

Grief is one of those topics on which we don’t do well here in America. Many of us have lost the old social rituals of grieving and care that help people in their loss. Everyone’s lives seem to keep moving forward while we are stuck.

Family and friends check in, offer support, make food, and give care. Until they don’t anymore. Support fades as our healing moves more slowly than the pace of modern life. People may assume we should move on or return to our old selves.

And suppose the loss is something more complicated or ongoing. In that case, it may be outright taboo to talk about it: a chronic illness, disability, infertility and miscarriage, a difficult divorce, or becoming estranged from a loved one.

It may feel like no one hears the ongoing grief of each new change or each moment that could have been different if only.

Grief is complicated and personal.

There is no right or wrong way to grieve, no matter the form of our loss. Still, sometimes, our grief may overwhelm us. We may feel trapped in the pain. We wake in the night and sob, our bodies wrung out and aching, an echo of our hearts.

We lose focus, shrouded in a fog of sorrow or loss. We may act in ways we usually wouldn’t or turn to anything that helps dull the pain regardless of the cost.

Nothing seems to feed us – actual food or the people and activities we once enjoyed – and we aren’t even sure we’re hungry anymore.

We can find our way back to life.

Your grief is your own. It does not need to be anything other than what it is. But it does need to be experienced. It heals through being spoken, enacted, engaged – and composted.

What feels like poison becomes what feeds our future.

It doesn’t come in any predictable cycle but as a particular space around it, an awareness that the depths of our grief measure the heights of our love.

Therapy can be an external space to hold us in our process.

When we lose someone who we love, perhaps especially if that love was complicated, we find ways to honor our pain, to cope with the world as it is now, and to create a life that honors ourselves, our lost one, and the love between us.

When we lose some part of ourselves, of our identity, relationships, health, or hopes, we explore how and why the loss happened, honor what that lost part brought to our lives, and identify the values and core sense of ourselves that can guide us to a meaningful life.

You don’t have to be alone in this. Please call today for a free consultation and begin making the space you need to heal.