Category: Grief

For years I often heard people say that you have to go through grief and pain, you can’t go around it, you can’t go above it, you have to go through it. For years I didn’t understand what that meant. We live in an incredibly emotionally avoidant culture which then leads to chronic mental emotional health struggles, high addiction and disconnection from self and others among other symptoms. 

In order to move through grief or pain a person must create a safe space for emotions to build. Like a wave on a beach, emotions need to be able to build and crash safely on the shore before they can recede out and become calm again. Instead of allowing the natural flow, we often dam up the water as high as we can to keep it from crashing, but then when it inevitably breaks the dam, and the lifetime of suppressed emotions can come cascading and flooding ...

“It’s fine.”  “Everything is fine.”  “I’m fine.”  Have you ever strung together these three sentences and thought to yourself, “shoot, I think I might not be fine”. 

About a year ago I was in a car accident that resulted in emergency surgery, a stay in the trauma center at the hospital, and a long recovery (in addition to other challenges). It was the most challenging and scary time in my life. I didn’t think that I was going to make it, and yet I would find myself telling my loved ones who came to visit me, “It’s fine.”  “Everything is fine.”  “I’m fine.” 

Why is it so hard to admit that sometimes we are not fine? It has taken me a while to figure out why I was so desperately pushing myself to be fine. Though I wanted those words to be true, what I wanted more than anything was for my loved ones to think and feel that those words were true.

Whet ...

When you think of grief or grieving, what comes to mind? If you’re like many people, death and dying are probably at the top of the list, or perhaps they are the only points on the list. In my experience with people - both formal and informal - it has become apparent that grief is largely misunderstood and, therefore, not often acknowledged to its fullest extent. Aside from the necessary attention given to one who is dealing with death and the, oftentimes, unwanted effect of it, a wealth of circumstances and life events are likely to bring about legitimate grief. The difference with such instances not relating to death is the uncertainty about how to grieve or if it is even warranted, assuming it is not neglected altogether. Grief is primarily about mourning a loss - whether literal or figurative, concrete or abstract - which leads to the aspect of “normal” versus complicated grief. Given that I work in mental health care, I prefer to avoid the word n ...