The Meaning Only Grief Can Provide

Everyone Grieves Differently

That's what we're told.

And on one level, it's useful advice.

Everyone does experience grief differently. At their own pace. In their own time. In ways that may not always look understandable to anyone watching from the outside.

Sometimes grief is quiet.

Sometimes it's overwhelming.

Sometimes it looks like tears.

Sometimes it looks like getting up and going to work because that's the only thing you know how to do.

And sometimes it doesn't feel tolerable at all — until enough time has passed that what once felt impossible becomes something you can actually carry.

So yes.

Everyone grieves differently.

But there's a problem with leaving the conversation there.

It gives us permission to experience grief...

but it doesn't give us a framework for understanding it.

And without a framework, grief can become something we simply endure.

Something that happens to us.

And this matters because grief isn't just an emotional experience.

Your body experiences it too.

The thoughts, emotions, and patterns running beneath awareness are constantly producing chemistry. That chemistry becomes information for the cells.

So when grief remains unresolved — when the emotional cycle never gets the opportunity to complete — the body can remain in the biochemical environment created by that unfinished experience.

This is one of the reasons grief belongs in a conversation about healing.

Not because grief is something to be "fixed."

It isn't.

Grief is love adjusting to loss.

It isn't an afflictive emotional program.

It is a necessary passage. It is the yang to love's yin.

And because it is necessary and the other side of the same coin, the answer isn't to get better at avoiding it.

The answer is to get better at knowing it.

Does Everyone Grieve Differently?

In my training, I learned to see a distinction between experiencing grief and being trained to know grief.

The first is universal.

The second isn't.

Most of us were never taught that there's a framework to grieving. We were taught to get through it.

To be strong.

To carry on.

To give it time.

To keep busy.

To take our minds off things.

To look for the silver lining.

To tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason.

And some of those things may provide temporary relief.

But relief isn't the same thing as resolution.

There are several very predictable places we can get stuck.

Avoidance

This is probably the most common.

And it can be surprisingly difficult to recognize because avoidance doesn't always look like avoidance.

Sometimes it looks like fidgeting.

Not being able to sit still.

Keeping the house immaculate.

Working longer hours.

Filling every available space in the calendar.

Surrounding yourself with people and activities so you don't have to be alone with what you're feeling.

Eating.

Drinking.

Taking something to make the feeling quieter.

Anything that creates just enough distance between you and the grief that you don't have to fully experience it.

The truth is, the pain of grief is unavoidable. If left unresolved it will chase you for a lifetime.

So the question becomes:

Are you implementing tactics to avoid feeling the pain that is already here?

That's a very different question.

Because the things we do to avoid an experience can become a second problem layered on top of the first.

False Comfort

Then there are the platitudes.

"Everyone grieves differently."

"Children aren't supposed to die before their parents."

"Time heals all wounds."

Some of these sound compassionate. But compassion and truth aren't always the same thing.

Children have been dying before their parents since the beginning of time.

It's devastating.

It's heartbreaking.

But saying that it isn't supposed to happen doesn't make it less true. Sometimes what sounds like comfort is actually resistance to reality.

And that's important because grief asks something very different of us. It asks us to meet reality as it is.

And "time heals all wounds"?

Also not quite.

Time passes. What you do with that time is what matters. Some people become increasingly free as they move through grief. Others become increasingly defined by it. The passage of time alone doesn't determine which one happens.

So become curious about the things you've been told about grief.

Question them.

Look for evidence. What is actually true? What is simply something people say because they don't know what else to say?

Don't settle for a platitude where grief work belongs.

And don't confuse a tactic with training.

The Double-edged Sword Of Punishment

This one can be particularly insidious.

The first edge is believing that the loss somehow happened because you did something wrong.

That you should have done something differently.

That you weren't good enough.

That you failed someone.

That somehow, if you'd been more careful, more loving, more disciplined, more aware...

this wouldn't have happened.

The second edge is self-punishment.

Working harder.

Training harder.

Eating more restrictively.

Becoming more disciplined.

Doing more.

As though enough effort could somehow compensate for or erase what happened. Or protect you from something like this happening again.

It can't.

Punishment isn't grief. And grief isn't punishment.

Waiting Until Grief Arrives To Train For It

This is the one I know personally.

Anyone who lives from one end of life to another will experience grief. I'm no different.

My first several experiences were lived in the absence of training. They were devastating losses to me. But it wasn't until I experienced six significant losses in one year that I began to appreciate what grief really means.

Six.

One after another.

It didn't feel like I would live through it.

That year changed how I think about grief.

And whether I would experience another loss with or without training.

I chose the training and it has served me well since especially in the last two years with even more significant losses for me and my family.

What I learned is that while the training doesn't eliminate the pain, building the capacity for grief and the understanding that it is designed to take you somewhere makes it a worthwhile path to tread rather than a sentence to be endured.

So What Is Grief Training?

It's not about becoming less sensitive or pretending to be "stoic" by becoming emotionally unreachable.

It's not about learning how not to cry.

And it certainly isn't cutting grief short because you're impatient to get back to "normal."

Grief Training allows you to turn toward the strong winds of pain and suffering until you understand your relationship with that side of you.

Until loss becomes something more than the absence of a soul. It becomes a journey to the depth of yours.

...

So watch yourself.

What do you really believe about grief?

What have you been taught?

What are your tendencies when pain arrives that you don't know how to fix?

Do you move?

Do you busy yourself?

Do you eat?

Do you work?

Do you numb?

Do you punish yourself?

Do you reach for platitudes?

Or can you become curious?

You don't have to answer those questions today.

But I would start asking them.

We'll talk about what that training actually looks like in the next newsletter.

Until next week,

Patricia

Dedicated to Casey and Meghan