True to my style, I recently jumped ahead in my tasks and started getting illustrations made for a grief book. One of the first that I drafted (and sent off to my lovely Fiverr designer in a far-off land) was this one:
This was me about six years ago. It wasn’t the grief itself that was making me bite my nails, pull my hair out, and hit the bottle more than the Bible.
It was the fear of the unknown.
The idea of stepping into a cyclone of grief was against everything I believed. I was the queen of silver linings—why in the world would I choose this type of agony for myself, and why would I wish this for others?
Of course, the irony was that I was stuck in the symptoms of grief even while I was using all of my power to avoid grief. Perhaps you’ve experienced a few of these:
- Irritability
- Anger (either aggression or bitterness)
- Lack of passion (what I called “the grayness”)
- Relentless nightmares
- Headaches
What are the symptoms you are experiencing?
The even greater irony in all of this was that instead of being able to control my symptoms with avoidance, it made them all the more unpredictable. Many people speak about feeling like they are being sidelined by grief–-like it comes out of nowhere at the worst possible moment.
This was the hard lesson I had to learn: Grief will never teach me how to grieve.
Similarly, the symptoms of grief will just keep me stuck in grief.
So where to from here?
The first thing I speak about in the Grief Response Model is understanding what is inhibiting our grief. In essence, the question is, “What do you fear the most?” More often than not, the fear is not just fear itself but something tangible.
Maybe this is you right now:
- You’ve been avoiding a place you used to go to with a loved one because you don’t know how you will feel when you get there.
- You are thinking about not doing any holiday traditions this year to hopefully keep the happy emotions and memories firmly boxed up.
- You want to go through boxes of photos of your loved one but keep coming up with reasons why not to.
If you’re struggling with identifying the “how” or “what” of your grief…
Now, imagine how much mental real estate these circumstances and tasks have taken up in your mind over weeks, months, maybe even years! How often are you thinking about that box in your storage space?
Do you see the small but powerful shift here? The question is not always “How do I grieve?“ but rather “How do I take the first step to do this one thing I fear?”
Grief is big. Grief feels all encompassing.
I often say we can’t experience all the grief all at one time (we would explode), and we certainly can’t heal everything that has been affected by a loss all at one time.
What we can do is handle one element of grief at a time. And we start with whatever is right in front of us.
Right now, that thing you have been avoiding is in front of you. It’s the place with the “Start Here” sign above it.
Grief coaching is about healing forward. No one should walk through a time of grief alone. In fact, trying to walk alone is often what keeps us stuck inside the symptoms.
I love seeing the light in people’s eyes return. I love hearing about people taking small steps to overcome those places they have been avoiding in their grief. I love seeing people be set free and walk forward again.
Are you ready to take the first step?