What Is Grief?

 

I decided to dust off my old copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary to pull out the meaning of grief.

Grief. Grieve. It’s what we do when we’ve lost loved ones. And during that time, memories float to the surface or we intentionally take them out, dust them off, hold them in the palm of our hands or the deep spaces of our hearts, and gaze back upon them like a delicate, glass spheres. Right? I know that’s what I do. Really, every day. 

So Webster’s says that this about grief: 

Grief (grēf) intense emotional suffering caused by loss, disaster, misfortune, etc.; acute sorrow; deep sadness 

Of course, we all know what grief is. Experiencing it is what’s abundantly hard. Society has pre-prescribed notions about what it means to mourn and then ultimately grieve the loss of someone we love. Here are just a few of those ideas: 

• After a certain amount of time, you should be over it, move on. Because, of course, time is the healer of all things (insert sarcasm). 

• Grief happens in stages. The genesis of this came from Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and I appreciate so much of what she’s given to the dying community. However, grief doesn’t observe any assigned stages and doesn’t abide by a timeline. You can bounce from denial to anger to acceptance and back again like a game of hopscotch. 

• Grief is the same for everyone. 

• Talking about or having someone ask about my loved one makes it worse. Now for some people this may be true (since we all grieve differently). The thing is, when we’ve lost someone, we’ve already been through the worst (or one of the worst) things in our lives. For me, I love talking about my son who died. • When grief is resolved, it never comes up again. 

• Continuing to live dishonors my loved one. More about this in a later post. 

Loss can come in many forms. The death of loved ones (including pets), the loss of a life we knew through revelation or tragedy, the amputation of body parts, even divorce, break-ups, or moving to a new place. 

In More Than A Chapter, I will focus on the losses I’ve experienced. There have been more than a few. From the loss of two pregnancies to the death of my 13-year-old son to undergoing a bilateral mastectomy and coming face-to-face with trauma I only recently uncovered. I’m hoping my journey will help you through your journey. Because, I’ll tell you, this shit isn’t easy. I’ve had many dark nights of the soul—and still will. It’s so much better to find companionship when we experience loss or tragedy. It’s not that we relish the fact that people are suffering. It’s knowing there are others out there who understand that helps us find our way through the darkness. So I hope this blog will turn on the light for you. What are some preconceived notions about grief that you don’t find to be true?