Living On, Not Moving On.
Before we journey together and deeply dive into today's topic of Grief and Loss, we must understand one key factor: the grief process is highly individual, and there is no RIGHT WAY to grieve. I start with this because people often say, "Why aren't I grieving like so-and-so" or "I read on the internet that my grief should follow this pattern, but it doesn't. Is something wrong with me?" These questions we pose to ourselves in a grief state add hardship and pain to our already painful journey and push us to believe that if we deviate from what is considered "normal" grieving, something is wrong with us, and maybe we are even broken. Thus, I hope that by the end of this brief post, we will better understand that each grief journey is unique. While on this path of healing from loss, we are not gaining the strength to say GOODBYE finally but HELLO AGAIN.
As a graduate student trainee, I worked in various institutions and clinics with diverse populations holding multiple beliefs about grief and loss. After a couple of months as a somewhat naive psychological trainee, I realized the very Western approach (I will discuss this approach in just a minute) to dealing with grief was not helping my clients; if anything, they weren't returning for subsequent sessions, and I felt like a complete failure. You ask, well, what is this Western approach to grief? Without going into extreme detail (for your sake), the idea we typically hold in Western Culture about grief and loss is this: how soon (how quickly) are we ready to say Goodbye, pack up the memories of the loss, store the photos, clothes and other memories in the garage or attic, mourn privately and move on from the loss as quickly as possible? Yet the critical insight I hope you take from what I just described is the SPEED at which we say GOODBYE. For many of us (not all) who live in a Western Culture, we feel as though we are ready for closure from the loss when we can say Goodbye to the person we have lost and shut the door on the pain from that loss. Is that the wrong way to manage loss? The quick answer is NO; again, there is nothing wrong with this grief process, and this post is not about casting judgment on which grief journey is best. Instead, I would like to provide an alternate view of our grief journey, which finally yielded helpful and healing results in my psychological trainee years: Saying Hello Again.
You see, after realizing my Western approach to grief and loss was not productive, a seasoned supervisor lent me a book by Dr. Michael White, discussing an alternative view to how we grieve. So let's dive in:
As mentioned earlier, we, you and I, can so often judge our grief experience off of unrealistic healing expectations and attempts to quantify how long we should grieve before we say Goodbye and Move on to the next phase of life. Did you catch that? I'll repeat it we base our healing from loss on this unrealistic belief that we say Goodbye as quickly as possible and Move on with our lives. Again, people have said that that healing path works for them, but I wonder about the depth of healing in their lives. When working with individuals who have attempted to walk the grief path of "Let's Move On," I typically find that pain from the loss will eventually come up again for them. At that point, they realize there are some unresolved experiences related to their loss that they have been carrying with them. What are these unresolved experiences? Anger, consistent low-grade irritability, loss of vitality for life (the zest of life is gone), social isolation, and sorrow have replaced hopefulness, and so on.
Interestingly, many well-intentioned friends and family members ask those grieving, "Well, what do you expect to feel? You've lost (insert person); it's normal to live with a gaping hole of pain and anger for the rest of your life." It is as though these well-intentioned people are telling the grieving individual your continued experience of anger reveals the depth of their love/care for the person you love; wear it as a badge of honor and move on with your new reality. If this is your story, I hope you can indulge me for the next couple of paragraphs and allow me to walk with you on an alternative path of healing and re-storying your loss.
Living On: Saying Hello Again
I will begin by saying that grieving and experiencing loss is neither easy nor straightforward. No amount of experience or therapeutic insights will be able to bring back the individuals we lose on this path called life. As a therapist, I am deeply moved by the loss people endure and equally honored to be entrusted to walk with an individual through their grief process. Therefore, as I describe an alternative view of grieving, Living On, I do not want you to feel invalidated or as though I am attempting to make light of a challenging life experience. No, once again, it is my hope to instill hope in a rather bleak and lonely experience that you are not alone in attempting to understand how to grieve and re-story your loss.
What is it?
The concept of Living On is based upon the work by Dr. Micheal White, a narrative therapist, who paved the way for many psychologists, such as myself, to re-story how we view working with grief and helping people transition from the prevailing view of LOSS as GOODBYE to LOSS as a chance to say HELLO AGAIN. Essentially, it is Living On with the individual's memory while you grieve, NOT seeking to say GOODBYE. The concept of Living-On is giving place to your grief in your day, sitting with the memories of the individual, allowing the tears to fall, inviting emotions of pain into your grief journey, learning your grief limits, and day-by-day allowing yourself to say Hello to the memories of your loved one, rather than rushing to shut down or erase the memory or experience you shared. When we shift from the MOVING ON path of grief to the LIVING ON path, we pause memories of our loved ones. We become mindful that although they are no longer with us, we do not have to bury every detail of who they were and what they meant to us under the debris of anger or unresolved pain. Instead, we can learn to say Hello Again and invite their memory into our present. Maybe I've already turned some of you off to this alternative view of grief and loss, but don't quit reading, please. Give me one more chance to help you see the benefits.
You're hurting now, maybe even angry that they are no longer with you. It is understandable. But you must remember this: Is hurt, anger, and isolation (amongst other experiences) what you want to continue to feel? I can almost certainly say that is not what you want for yourself. The other question is: What would they like for you? Suppose these two questions provoke you to consider an alternative way to heal. In that case, I've done what I set out to: give you an alternative view of managing your grief (it's the first step to re-storying your loss).
I encourage you to read the article below, published on the Dulwich Centre's Website, highlighting the work of Dr. Michael White and his colleagues. It is an excellent introduction to Saying Hello Again on your grief journey.
ARTICLE:
