Grief and Honor
Grief and Honor
If you have experienced trauma or loss you have probably had to deal with grief. Grief might as well be a cuss word because it sucks. It’s not fun. It’s not cute. It’s not pretty. To experience grief something bad and irreplaceable has occurred.
Grief is ignited by many things. The loss of a job. The loss of a pet. The abandonment of a spouse. The break up a long time relationship. The break up of a relationship you gave high expectations. The childhood you never experienced. The reality of your family failing you and leaving you emotionally bankrupt. There are many things we humans need to grieve.
There are many things we need to grieve. Honor those spaces that need care.
How do you grieve in the rushed Western culture of ‘get over it’?
We’re constantly pushed to seek HAPPINESS. I would like to pause for a moment and scold our forefathers.
Why did you put the “pursuit of happiness” in the Constitution? The word happiness has created a culture of selfishness. I want it to be rewritten to say, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of fulfillment.” Doesn’t that sound better? To live a fulfilled life is VERY different than a happy one. [But that is a blog post for another day.]
Grief. That good grief. Grief is a painfully beautiful process. Grief is defined as:1 a: deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement b: a cause of such suffering 2 a: TROUBLE, ANNOYANCE b: annoying or playful criticism c: an unfortunate outcome : DISASTER —used chiefly in the phrase come to grief d : MISHAP, MISADVENTURE 3 obsolete
You see, grief covers a lot of ground for what can make us sad or experience loss. Each person processes grief their own way but BLESS - do not rush your process. Grief truly does come in phases. If you rush through the grief process you will not heal. You won’t. Grief allows us to experience all of the emotions associated with loss. By rushing through the process we dishonor our own heart.
Processing grief is just as painful as experiencing loss.
It hurts. Stages of grief may include: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance, and according to Dr. David Kessler, meaning. In my own life I’ve found all of these to be true.
Denial - denial that your loss is real or that the loss might be returned to you. In the case of my second husband I held out hope that he would come back. When his then girlfriend paid for him to go on a cruise I knew he wasn’t coming back. I had to file divorce papers. It hurt. I couldn’t deny is absence or his desire to abandon our family. He was gone.
Anger - angry that loss has occurred and the injustice of the loss. Anger manifested most before I learned what grief actually is and what to do with it. My first marriage lasted from 2010 to early 2016. I sought counseling as soon as we separated. My counselor looked at me and said, “Your husband isn’t your problem. Your lost childhood is. You’ve got four weeks to grieve your marriage then we’re going to process the grief of your childhood.” Well. Cussword. It hurt. I didn’t realize the anger I was holding onto was misplaced grief from my childhood until that very moment in my counselors office. I didn’t stop being angry until late 2016.
Depression - I spent most of 2010 - 2013 depressed; I didn’t know it though. I used food to cope. What I didn’t realize then but recognize now is my constant stress eating was to fill in the overwhelming sadness I’d lived through up to that time. Depression makes you tired. Excessively tired. There was a short bout of it after my second husband left but it paled in comparison to the depression of 2010-2013.
Bargaining - this one is a little tricky. This one shows up at weird times and it’s one I’m familiar with but didn’t camp out in because I do have a grip to know that what’s happened in my life was unavoidable and I had no control over it. Bargaining is the practice of saying, “If I had only______ fill in the blank ______ then _______ wouldn’t have happened.” I am a person who only has two regrets in life so camping out with bargaining isn’t something that’s been an extended process for me but it’s important to experience it. I cannot and you cannot control the actions or mishaps of life.
Acceptance - what a cuss word acceptance is. Acceptance is not to be confused with consent. Most often people don’t consent to trauma happening to them it’s just something that happens. However, you do have to make peace with trauma. Making peace with it simply means you have come to a place where loss doesn’t negatively hurt your mind or emotions any longer. This will come in waves.
When my second husband left there were a great deal of things I had to mourn. Each part of the loss required and still requires it’s own grief process. Most recently: my kids’ have a void of a father and my son knows it. He’s little and people dismiss his curiosity but he misses having a dad and it’s heartbreaking. Together we’re grieving this loss. Eventually my son will walk through these stages of grief and accept that he was not responsible for a selfish adult’s bad choices. It will take time but it will come.
Meaning or Purpose - my second husband’s absence meant I was divinely protected from a great deal of future hurt (as well as the kids’. This is Divine protection over their lives.) It’s given me the ability to be a better mother. His departure put us in an unfortunate financial situation; now we’re Welfare recipients. I’m so grateful. I can relate to women I haven’t been able to show true compassion towards; I didn’t understand it was so easy to find yourself in a position of financial hardship. [More to come on this later.] The purpose in all of this though - is to lean closer to my Creator and show my kids they are abundantly loved.
Beloved don’t rush through the grief process.
Don’t try to ‘get over it’ and ‘be happy’. You’re selling yourself short. When you experience the discomfort of grief take a moment and sit in each phase; take as long as you need with each one because grief is multi-faceted. You will be healed but healing doesn’t mean a memory won’t pop up and cause momentary sadness. When momentary sadness manifests give it the two seconds it needs to exit your mind and continue. If that sadness looks like a tear - shed the tear. If anger needs a moment to rage - write it down or roll down the window and yell. If you need to bargain for a minute because you’re second guessing yourself then do it. Take your time to be in each step for each facet.
Don’t rush through the process of grief.
The risk of rushing: The wound never heals.
At some point your flesh wounds have to be exposed to air - the wound dressings eventually have to be removed. Keeping them covered by temporary happiness will cause infection. Just like our bodies will become septic if we don’t receive proper treatment for our wounds - our minds will become septic if we don’t give it the proper space to heal from trauma.
Your trauma may have MULTIPLE stems but it is trauma. Giving yourself the space and mental frame to heal is HONORING your mind. Honoring your experiences heals and allows you to have a greater capacity to love those experiencing hardship. Your mind deserves honor. Your heart deserves honor but no one is responsible for giving it honor except you. When you honor and accept your experiences you take autonomy over your future. You give yourself the opportunity to live a future of LIGHT not burden.
Are there days when single motherhood is hard? Hell yes. Are there days when memories of my childhood make me sad? Definitely. Are there days when a bag of chips or chocolate is tempting to fill a void? Certainly. But going through the stages and giving space to the train of thought that’s present will allow me to make a better and healthier choice for my mind.
Grief, the stages of it, allows you to retrain your mind to have control over despair. It allows you to function in the midst of agony. The only way to have this kind of mental victory is to sit in each phase. Hear me, hear me, hear me, do not rush this process. The health of your future depends on the healing journey.