After my best friend Sheri’s death in high school, I didn’t have a single adult in my life who knew how to respond to my pain or show me the way to heal it. Their floundering in the face of my grief was as frightening to me as the fact that my dear friend could disappear from the earth in a flash. Just like that, she was gone, and none of us knew what to do about it. No one could show me the way home to myself.
How I wish I knew then what I know now. How I wish this wisdom for all my dear ones: Grieving is more than emoting over the pain of grief. It’s more than talking about your distress. Grieving is not so different from living. We cry. We laugh. We carry our sorrows, we set them aside. We forget. We remember. We resist. We embrace. Grieving is responding to the all of grief: the pain and the relief from pain, the joy and the sorrow, the love and the bitterness, the aloneness and togetherness, the unthinkable agony and the unexpected miracle that arises out of the paradox of losing what you cherish.
Unfortunately, too often, grief counselors and those deemed as the experts on grief will tell you that grieving involves a specific series of emotions, a particular way of thinking, or a line of grieving tasks you’re supposed to knock off one by one. Researchers stack up statistics and define “normal” by way of the majority. If you don’t fit the profile, you may be labeled as being emotionally or psychologically impaired.
What’s more, in an age of the “isms” and political correctness–in which we strive to give voice to those of all genders, ages, and ethnicities–we may fail to see the unique responses of each griever because we’re trying so hard to understand people in groups of likeness. Statistical norms are easily translated into expectations.
According to speculation about human tendencies, if you’re a woman experiencing grief, you’ll talk about your grief with someone. If you’re a man, you’ll respond to your grief by throwing yourself into mental or physical tasks. According to tendencies: Black/Afro-Americans defeat the pain of grief; Asian-Americans lean into it; Euro-Americans numb it; Hispanic Americans purge it; those of indigenous cultures in North America learn from it. But anyone with an eye for observing human behavior knows that these tendencies – which may or may not be documented through scientific study–are typecast pictures of us.
The reality is: no two grievers are exactly alike in the ways we perceive and respond to grief. Grieving is complicated enough without feeling pressured by medically sanctioned prescriptions or social expectations to do it someone else’s way. So, in your grieving, seek out the people, places, and corners of your soul that allow you to express and explore your honest-to-goodness grieving responses, and encourage others to do the same. Anything less will only keep you from yourself and those you love.
Above all else, grief asks you to remember what it is to be human. It asks you to be human in the only way you can–as the griever and healer you are. Know this: authentic grieving is breaking through what others do or do not do, to discover what grief asks of you.
Discover more from Doing Grief® in Real Life
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.