Love, Loss, & Learning to Grieve

Recognizing and normalizing the ways we process loss

When we talk about grief it is often in relation to the death of a person, but grief is about endings and transitions of all kinds. We can grieve people who are still alive. When we get a divorce, sever ties with a friend, or leave a job, all of those things can feel really sad and cause us to feel undone in some way. We go through the same process of feeling hurt, angry, and wondering what we could have done to create a different outcome, the same way we would while grieving a literal death. 

Grief isn’t always the reaction to a loss of life. Grief is a reaction to loss. 

Grief can be triggered by the loss of:  

• People who aren’t growing with us

• Relationships that we need to leave

• Parts of ourselves that we have lost or have chosen to leave behind

• Our childhood, or the childhood we wish we had

• Relationships that will never be what we want them to be

When we are grieving we may feel like there is an expiration date on that process, but it is normal to take a while to get through our grief, and sometimes that grief is never done with us. I remember the last big friendship breakup I had. There are times where I have dreams that we’re still friends, or that we’re trying to reconnect. When I wake up in the morning, I recognize that  missing the friendship (not the person), is part of grief. 

We like to put things in black and white terms, but if our relationships with people were all bad, we wouldn’t miss them when they were gone. We say a person is bad because 7 out of 10 times they did awful things, but when we do that we are glossing over the other 3 times when they did something wonderful. That’s what we miss. We’re grieving the connection, the deep belly laughs, and the joy. We grieve because we are missing the intimacy and the friendship when it was good. 

Sometimes we just want our grief to go away. We try to ignore it or make ourselves forget, but it always comes back. We don’t really have control over grief. It always resurfaces, and it’s usually at a time that feels really inconvenient, or when we’re not in a space to deal with it. There’s nothing like trying to push down some grief and then the next thing you know you’re stuck at a light crying and can’t drive. 

I think about grief as the amount of love that we had for someone. When we say we don’t want to grieve or we want to be done with our grief, that is akin to asking ourselves to stop loving the person we lost, or saying that we want to let go of all of our good memories along with the bad ones. Sometimes when we watch a movie, we’ll say to ourselves, that was a good movie, but I wish I could have changed this part or that part, or we’ll say it wasn’t our preferred ending. Our relationships with people can spark those same feelings. 

When you’re grieving:

• Acknowledge the presence of your grief 

• Talk about it with someone you trust 

• Figure out if there’s work you still need to do around that grief

The best way to deal with grief is to allow yourself to feel it. When you allow yourself the space to grieve it dissipates. 

Journal Prompt

What are you grieving?

How do you move through grief?

A Few Things That Caught My Attention This Week

• ‘Depression Rooms’ and ‘Doom Piles’: Why Clearing the Clutter Can Feel Impossible, by Dana G. Smith in The New York Times.

• 3 Things to Do When a Family Member Won’t Change Their Toxic Behavior, by Jennifer Chin in Self Magazine

• Why Talking to Strangers is Good for Your Mental Health, by Deborah Netburn in the Los Angeles Times. 

• Shrinking. You can watch this show on AppleTV.

• Sharper. You can watch this movie on AppleTV.

• Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through on the Hidden Brain podcast. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you stream podcasts.