Grief

I am currently writing a small book about Grief and I thought I would use this blog as a place to also put my thoughts out there.

I am not a grief expert; however, I am qualified to write about grief. I’m not uniquely qualified. I simply have some of the same experiences that so many do and I understand the benefit of realizing that you are not alone in your circumstances.

I have experienced grief as a young mother of a handicapped son.

I have experienced the grief of divorce.

I have experienced the grief of the death of a parent.

I have experienced the loss of a dream business.

I am a hospice nurse.

Together, we can explore what grief looks like, perhaps feels like, and how to move through it. ( I will work through those thoughts here in this blog with several posts.)

There are a few things in this life that all humans have in common, and loss is one of them. Followed closely by grief.

The American Psychological Association defines grief, in part, as: … the anguish experienced after significant loss.

When you lose something, ANYTHING, you will grieve. Whether it is a person, pet, dream, ideal, job, relationship, possession, health, wealth; the list goes on. Loss is loss.

There are stages to grief; through which everyone, who has experienced loss, will go. Each person will experience them in their unique way. Some skip around, don’t go in order; and some stay in one for a very long time before moving on. The five stages of grief, as defined by Kübler-Ross, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

When my dad died, I thought I had not had any loss in my life. I considered myself lucky that nobody close to me had died up to that point. I was 32. But what I was not willing to admit to myself, at that point in my life, was that I had gone through significant loss, I was just in denial about all of it. I still had four more stages to get to and go through.

Denial: this stage is usually first. Denial is when someone chooses to believe something is not as bad as it really is. Or that the thing (loss) did not really happen.

Anger: this stage usually occurs after denial, when the person realizes that avoiding reality isn’t working then they become frustrated and want to find blame for the loss.

Bargaining: this stage involves the “I will do this in exchange for that.”

Depression: this stage is all about despair. Isolation is common in this stage.

Acceptance: this is the stage that people usually arrive at. It is where emotions are more stable and based in reality.

Grieving is fluid. It can look very different day to day and person to person. Someone can think they have worked through them all and be at acceptance and then something will happen that has them right back to anger.

Grief never ends; the loss is always there. Most say that it lessens with time. Others say the hole only gets bigger where the loved one once was.

The loss of a child is, to most, the worst possible loss imaginable; but to the childless, the loss of a pet might rip the same size hole in their heart. We cannot judge someone’s loss and measure it against anyone else’s. Just like we can’t judge anyone’s journey through grief and the time it is taking them to get through the stages.

to be continued….