The Thing About Grief Is...

The thing about grief is… it’s a beautifully universal human experience. Every human being experiences loss, some more than others, and everyone experiences it differently. But it’s a given – with life, there is loss. It’s painful, confusing, horrible, beautiful, and pretty much everything in between.

It's interesting that such a common experience is wrapped in confusion and uncertainty. I’m asked quite often when working with grief if the person is grieving “the right way”, often feeling like somehow they aren’t – because it hurts, because it’s confusing because it STILL hurts, because sometimes it’s not there at all, because people say you should be devastated and maybe you’re not. I think it’s past time we drop the idea of what grief is supposed to look like. Forget how you’ve seen it on TV, forget the 5 stages, forget what people have told you is “the right way,” to grieve. Also – forget that grief and loss can only exist with death. With every end of something, loss exists – job loss, retirement, pandemic, break-up, getting married, moving, losing friends, gaining friends, becoming a parent, choosing not to have kids. All of these instances and many, many more involve grief and loss. But for the purpose of clarity in this post, I’m going to focus on grief and loss from the death of a loved one. (And don’t think for a second the loss of your pet isn’t included in that. If you’ve lost a furry family member, I hope you find peace in time. Please know that your grief is valid).  I’m going to do my best to explain what grief can be from my personal experience, my professional experience and the words of others who have said it much better than I ever could….

The thing about grief is that there’s no manual, no steps, no milestones that we can use to navigate this process. There’s no allotted amount of pain or set amount of time that we can use to mark that we are moving through grief “the right way”. And it doesn’t always “get better with time”. It might get easier to manage with time… but not always. There is no timeline. You might find you’re feeling great for a week, a month, a year, and suddenly you’re in grief again. This doesn’t mean you have failed, or aren’t healing. It is just this… grief. Healing and peace are not linear with grief. There is no right way. And each loss is experienced differently. Not just between different people but also within ourselves. How we experience grief in one loss will not be the same for the next loss.

Death is old, but it’s always new – Leonard Cohen. 

Death and loss are a part of everything, and always have been. But each experience of grief – that part is always new. Will always feel different. Because each relationship we have with whomever we’ve lost is different. 

I’m often asked the same questions when working with grief: Am I failing at this/Not grieving right? How is grieving supposed to look? When will I get over it/feel normal again?

To start with the last question – when will you get over it? Feel normal again?

You won’t.

You’ve lost someone. This shapes you and changes you. That old version of you doesn’t exist anymore (there’s loss in that, too); you are forever changed by the losses in your life. The degree to which you change depends on the severity of the loss. There is no “getting over it”; there could be moving through it, healing from it, learning to live with it, navigating who you are now and being okay with it. Those are all possible. But normal… your normal will be different now

There’s a quote therapists often reference when working with grief that discusses grief as a shipwreck. When I first heard of this quote, it sat with me, resonated with me, and I’ve used this quote often, but when I decided to write this post about grief and loss, I wanted to find the original source as it’s never really mentioned. And I fell down the rabbit hole.

This quote was originally a reply to a thread on Reddit. When I read through the thread, it touched my soul. It was no longer just a quote about grief for me; it was an experience that I felt in my bones. The post is 11 years old. And 11 years ago, it resonated with some many people that it took on a life of its own. At some point, it was archived, then unarchived, and now active. 11 years later…. People are still returning to this post to discuss how it impacted them. And the original writer – he continues to respond. I’m going to add the entire quote here because I believe the message as a whole is important. But like I often say to those I work with – take what fits for you and throw away the rest.

Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far), and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks. - GSnow

When he is asked if other users can take his words to help their loved ones who are grieving, he says:

“Everything is a gift. Sometimes the gift is TO you, and sometimes the gift is THROUGH you to somebody else. If the grief I have had and the experience it has given me can be of use to someone else, then even that grief is a gift...through me and TO someone else. I have received wisdom from those before me to whom it was cost. This, therefore, is yours. Pass it to whomever you wish. Change it if you need to to fit whatever situation life puts you in. It's not mine anymore, it's yours.”

And one thing I might add to it is that it may be weeks, months or even years. There’s no timeline for grief. If those waves are still 100 feet tall years later, that’s okay. I’d also add that it’s complicated…. Relationships are complicated. Grief is complicated. Sometimes we don’t feel this overwhelming sadness. And that’s okay too. Sometimes you’ll feel anger, guilt, shame, or relief… that is also okay. There’s also a thing called delayed grief. You may not experience any waves at all, a calm in the storm of the wreckage around you. This is also okay.  

Here’s the original thread if you want to be in your feelings today:  https://www.reddit.com/r/Assistance/comments/hax0t/my_friend_just_died_i_dont_know_what_to_do/

This thread also gives great examples of words you can say to support someone who is grieving. We often feel helpless watching the people we care about suffer a loss. We don’t know what to say or do. Really, there’s very little you can say that will make it better. Often just holding space for that person to either talk or not talk. Cry or not cry, distract or sink into the grief can be supportive. 

I often explain grief like a light switch. It’s on, or it’s off. You’re either in grief or not in grief. In the beginning, that switch may be on constantly (or maybe it hasn’t been turned on yet at all), only turning off for a few moments at a time. Sometimes the switch turns off and on throughout a day, a week, or a month at random. Sometimes we turn the switch off ourselves because we need to take a break from the grief. Sometimes the switch has been off for months, and suddenly it turns back on without warning. Sometimes we choose to turn it on ourselves. 

There are tools you can use to try to manage the overwhelm of grief (and considering the length of this post already I’ll save that for my next post). But the first thing I’d check in with yourself on is whether you’re in the part of grief where you just need to float.  And please, know that your grief is valid no matter how you experience it. 

There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. Grief is hard. We have several therapists specializing in grief work who would be honoured to walk you through your grief journey if you need support. You can book online for our Edmonton and St. Albert locations with any of our grief specialists here.

Or email us anytime, and we would be happy to suggest a therapist who may be a good fit based on your concerns: info@summitcs.ca

My favourite quote on grief:

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard - Winnie the Pooh

You can read more about who we work with grief and loss here

You can read more about pet loss and bereavement here

Lyndsay Wright