Grief
Grief is a Circular Staircase
I don’t know Deepak Chopra, except that he has simultaneous fame and infamy. I’m sure the man is a decent human being.
And I’m sure he was caught off guard with the question posed in this video here.
I hope he really didn’t mean it when he answered said question with this piece of crap:
“You must go through the grieving process … if you remember all the joy you got out of (the relationship you had with your deceased spouse) and you grieve and you heal your body at the same time, then within six months (grief) will start to dissipate, and within one year you will be back to your baseline status. We know this from psychological studies.”
When he talks about “the grieving process”, I’m not sure what he means; furthermore, I’m not sure HE knows what he means. Either way, when he starts talking about a time frame for grief “dissipating” and regaining your “baseline status”, I STRONGLY disagree with Mr. Chopra.
There is no time frame. And there is no exact “grief process.” There are not scientific stages that the psychological community agrees upon (there’s a number of different models of grief work, each entirely or slightly different than the next). Even though the psychological community is greatly indebted to Kübler-Ross, there’s a tendency in pop psychology to think that grief follows in linear lock-step with the five stages of grief. Some even attach a timeline to this process. And they’re wrong.
Here a poem that communicates the more “circular staircase” of grief.
The night I lost you
Someone pointed me towards
The Five Stages of Grief.
Go that way, they said,
It’s easy, like learning to climb
Stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
Carefully setting the table
For two. I passed you the toast –
You sat there. I passed
you the paper – you hid
behind it.
Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
The paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
And so I moved on to
Bargaining. What could I exchange
For you? The silence
After storms? My typing fingers?
Before I could decide, Depression
Came puffing up, a poor relation
Its suitcase tied together
With string. In the suitcase
Were bandages for the eyes
And bottles of sleep. I slid
All the way down the stairs
Feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
Flashed on and off
In defective neon.
Hope was a signpost pointing
Straight in the air.
Hope was my uncle’s middle name,
He died of it.
After a year I am still climbing,
Though my feet slip
On your stone face.
The treeline has long since disappeared;
Green is a color
I have forgotten.
But now I see what I am climbing
Towards: Acceptance
Written in capital letters,
A special headline:
Acceptance,
Its name is in lights.
I struggle on,
Waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
All the landscapes I’ve ever known
Or dreamed of. Below
A fish jumps: the pulse
In your neck.
Acceptance. I finally reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.
The Six R’s of Grief Work
There’s a number of different grief models that have been proposed by various psychologists. Some are good, some … not so much.
I’ve always advised that it’s dangerous to see grief work as linear. Grief rarely works in a stage-by-stage process. Rather, it’s usually cyclical. We feel and think (x) for one week; the next week we feel and think (y); and then the next week we feel and think (x) again. And we go in these cycles for years, maybe decades, maybe the rest of our lives.
The following model of grief work — developed by Therese Rando — proposes linear stages of grief work … something that I don’t like. Nevertheless, I think it can still be helpful to see these “Six R’s” and find a way we can relate to them:
This description of Rondo’s “Six R’s” is written by Kathryn Patricelli
- Recognize the loss: First, people must experience their loss and understand that it has happened.
- React: People react emotionally to their loss.
- Recollect and Re-Experience: People may review memories of their lost relationship (events that occurred, places visited together, or day to day moments that were experienced together).
- Relinquish: People begin to put their loss behind them, realizing and accepting that the world has truly changed and that there is no turning back.
- Readjust: People begin the process of returning to daily life and the loss starts to feel less acute and sharp.
- Reinvest: Ultimately, people re-enter the world, forming new relationships and commitments. They accept the changes that have occurred and move past them.
Words From a Grieving Friend
A facebook and real life friend of mine posted this in his status yesterday. It was so good that I wanted to share it with you.
If you know someone who is grieving, this is probably how they want you to treat them:
Dear Friend,
Please be patient with me; I need to grieve in my own way and in my own time.
Please don’t take away my grief or try to fix my pain. The best thing you can do is listen to me and let me cry on your shoulder. Don’t be afraid to cry with me. Your tears will tell me how much you care.
Please forgive me if I seem insensitive to your problems. I feel depleted and drained, like an empty vessel, with nothing left to give.
Please let me express my feelings and talk about my memories. Feel free to share your own stories of my loved one with me. I need to hear them.
Please understand why I must turn a deaf ear to criticism or tired clichés. I can’t handle another person telling me that time heals all wounds.
Please don’t try to find the “right” words to say to me. There’s nothing you can say to take away the hurt. What I need are hugs, not words.
Please don’t push me to do things I’m not ready to do, or feel hurt if I seem withdrawn. This is a necessary part of my recovery.
Please don’t stop calling me. You might think you’re respecting my privacy, but to me it feels like abandonment. Please don’t expect me to be the same as I was before. I’ve been through a traumatic experience and I’m a different person.
Please accept me for who I am today. Pray with me and for me. Should I falter in my own faith, let me lean on yours. In return for your loving support I promise that, after I’ve worked through my grief, I will be a more loving, caring, sensitive, and compassionate friend-becauseI have learned from the best.
Love,
(Your name)
By Margaret Brownley
It All Comes Down to Choice
Today’s guest post is written by Alece Ronzino and was originally hosted by A Deeper Story.
Alece is a New Yorker changed by Africa. She is the founder of One Word 365 and a communications coach for non-profits. She blogs candidly about searching for God in the question marks of life and faith.
*****
Someone asked me the other day where I’m at in my journey. She was talking about the traumatic loss and transition I’ve endured in just about every single area of my life over the past few years. “Do you feel like you’re on the other side of it?”
I didn’t really know how to answer that question because I don’t think she fully understood what she was asking (though I know she certainly meant well.)
I’m in a much better place than I’ve been in a long time. Although I’m painfully aware of how fragile it all is, life feels good right now. And I haven’t been able to say that truthfully in years.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten over—or even through—my loss.
I think the idea of “recovery” from loss is a harmful and misleading mirage. It’s unrealistic to expect that life could ever go back to normal after catastrophic loss of any kind. In a way, life will be forever divided by before and after. And to strive to go back to normal—to return to how things were and how you felt before your loss—is like trying to get somewhere on a treadmill: exhausting and impossible.
I don’t know if I’m meant to come out on the other side of my heartache. At least not in the usual sense.
I’m discovering what it’s like to live in the delicate tension of sorrow and joy. What we deem to be opposites are not actually mutually exclusive. They can be—and maybe they should be—embraced together. We don’t move out of sorrow into joy, as if we’ve recovered from our heartache. Instead we learn to choose joy even when that seed of sorrow remains ever present.
Jerry Sittser, in A Grace Disguised, said it so beautifully:
“I did not go through pain and come out the other side; instead, I lived in it and found within that pain the grace to survive and eventually grow. I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am.”
What happens in me matters far more than what happens to me. It’s not my experiences that define me, but my responses to them.
So instead of making it my aim to get through what’s happened to me, I am learning to focus on my response to what’s happened to me. As with most things, it all comes down to choice.
That’s the reason “choose” is my One Word for this year. Because I need constant reminding that even when I have nothing else, I always have the power to choose.
While I can’t control what’s going on in this world or in my life, I do have control over my responses to those things. So today—same as yesterday and the day before—it’s entirely up to me to choose how I will respond to pain and sorrow and loss. I need to continue to choose to face, feel, and work through it, rather than to avoid it. And I need to continue to choose joy and trust right here, right now.
So if you’re wondering where I’m at in my journey, know this: You can always find me right here, in the middle of the tension between joy and sorrow, grief and gratitude, weakness and strength, questions and faith.
Join me here, won’t you?
*****
Connect with Alece via the following:
Visit Alece’s blog | Follow her on Twitter | Join One Word 365
“Real” Men and Mourning
I’m a big fan of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. I read their website every day, watch all their games and follow the off-season stories.
Exactly two years ago the Eagles’ former Head Coach (current Head Coach of the Kansas City Chiefs), Andy Reid, lost his 29 year old son Garrett to a battle with drug addiction. Garrett died on a Monday. Garrett’s funeral was the following Tuesday. And Andy Reid — Garrett’s father — was back to coaching the Eagles THE DAY AFTER the funeral for their first preseason game.
I don’t comment on a person’s grief work, so if Andy Reid thinks that going to his job the day after his son’s funeral is the right thing for him and his family, then so be it.
Men will often attempt to use work as a way to process their grief. We will also attempt to care for others as a means to process our grief and may neglect our own needs for the sake of one’s family, or — in Andy’s case — his team. So, as I said, I’m not judging Andy’s grief work.
But I do want to comment on HOW Reid’s quick return to work is being interpreted by his players.
Jason Kelce, the Eagles starting center, had this to say:
“I think this is just Andy. We’ve got guys who lose relatives all the time on the team, and they’re gone for a significant amount of time, and Andy’s talking about being back already. That just goes to show his level of professionalism — his level of manhood really. There’s no question it’s eating at him inside. To be able to not show it, to be able to hold it down just so the team doesn’t see him like that, that’s impressive.“
To be able to not show his grief over the tragic death of his son … to be able to hold it down so the team doesn’t see him “like that”, that’s impressive? What?
What is Kelce implying? Is he implying that Reid’s “level of manhood” would be in question if the team saw him grieve … if the team saw him cry? Is Kelce implying that manhood equals emotional repression? Yup, I think that’s what Kelce means. And Kelce is implying that showing one’s emotions IS NOT manly and would not be good for other men to see.
Seriously? Are our young boys still being taught this crap by their male role models?
Let me clear a few things up for Mr. Kelce.
1. While it may be true that men are generally less emotional, manhood is not increased (or decreased) by one’s ability to repress emotion.
2. You may want to be strong when a death occurs, but strength — like manhood — isn’t determined by one’s ability to repress emotion.
3. There is no “manly” way to grieve, so don’t let someone (especially another man) tell you how you should feel or shouldn’t feel.
4. Mourning IS manly IF it’s performed by a man.
5. If you show grief in front of other men, and they judge you or attempt to diminish your mourning, find other company so that you can work through your grief in a more healthy environment.
Whether by nature or nurture, men and emotions have a difficult relationship that is farther complicated by a highly complex and uncontrollable experience like death. The bottom line is this: there isn’t a RIGHT or WRONG way for men (or woman or children) to grieve and mourn. But, it is healthy if you can find a place, space and group that can allow you to work through your grief on your own pace. Ideally, look for a group of people who can walk with you through the valley, and if you find that place and those people who can allow you to work through your grief, you are on a healthy path.
