Good grief

Processing grief is like treasure hunting in the dump. In order to find the good stuff, you can't tiptoe through.

You must dig in and prepare to get messy, knowing the riches of joy and peace lie underneath the unpleasant stuff.

~ www.lorilara.com

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Sorry for the gap between blog posts lately. Have been busy digging through about 4 decades of stuff, looking for that treasure of joy and peace underneath it all. Not certain when it will be discovered, but have hope that eventually it will.

This post (and anticipated future ones) will talk about something which everyone at some point and in some form will experience in life... grief.

What is grief?

Simply put it is a natural and human response to loss. It comes in many different forms and intensities - and is not always about the death of a loved one (even though that is most commonly associated with grieving). Grief can be triggered by many things:

• changes or loss of any relationship
  - divorce
  - miscarriage
  - end of friendships
  - death
• illness
  - your own, or that of a loved one
• financial instability
• trauma
• changes in life
  - retirement
  - moving to a new location or job
  - graduating from school
• loss of a dream
• loss or absence of what "might have been"

Subtle or intense losses can all lead to the path of grieving. It makes sense that the more significant a loss, the more intense the grief might be.

Most people are aware of the "five stages of grief": denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Other theories out there point to anywhere from three to 12 different stages of grief. None of which have been able to fully describe everyone's grieving reality. Separating grief into stages implies that mourning is a passive experience - creating an expectation of what it is supposed to be like. This can in turn create the assumption that each of the stages at one point or another will be experienced.

But everyone grieves in their own way, and in their own time. Every grief is unique. There is no map or timetable for grieving. Grief can manage to slide into every crevasse and space of daily life, and easily infiltrates the long nights.

When a person is not able to cope with the intensity of emotions - the heaviness of heart and mind - often they will find other methods to distract themselves from the loss or trauma. Trying to avoid feelings of sadness and loss can only prolong the whole grieving process. This can then lead to other complications such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or health problems.

It isn't always easy to tell the difference between grief and depression - they share many overlapping symptoms. Grief can be more like a roller coaster - with a variety of feelings, both good and bad - where there can be moments of happiness in the midst of grief. With depression thoughts of emptiness, darkness and gloom are more constant.

Medication (anti-depressants) can relieve some of the symptoms of grief - but it cannot treat the cause, or the loss itself. Numbing the pain and delaying the mourning process is not the cure. Grief must be eventually felt and worked through before healing can be found - you can’t heal what you can’t feel. Grief can be better understood in yourself if you are aware of the nature of the pain. This is all part of the healing process.

If you haven't guessed by now, I'll tell you. Finally just this year I have been able to dig deep enough to uncover a foundation for the majority of depression in my life. Depression which has been very real, intense and pervasive. Lurking beneath it all with roots trailing back literally 40+ years (yes, that is a long time), what I discovered was... grief.