GOOD GRIEF
How
to recover from grief, loss or a broken heart
Zita Weber Ph.D.
Copyright
2012 Zita Weber
Smashwords Edition
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CONTENTS
1 Loss and grief: Part of our daily life
2 The broken heart: Understanding good grief
Part 2 | The many faces of grief
4 Incidental and inevitable losses, and life’s let-downs
Part 3 | The Challenge of Change: Grief into Growth, Loss into Gain
7 From ‘bad grief’ to ‘good grief’
8 Men, women, children and grieving
In memory of my father, Laszlo Weber
My thanks go to all those people, who over the years have been generous enough to share their stories with me and to trust that I would treat these respectfully. I hope I have done that. Without their stories, the theory would seem uninteresting. It is because of their stories that the theory comes alive and makes sense.
Thank you again, John.
The author acknowledges the work of the following authors, whose scales, exercises and ideas have helped shape her own:
• Glassock and Rowling, 1992
• Grollman and Kosik, 1996
• Levang, 1998
• McBride, 1996
• McKissock, 1983
• J. William Worden, 1991
I first experienced a personal loss when I was too young to understand. I felt profoundly unhappy and I even became physically ill, but I didn’t have the words to articulate what my body and soul felt – grief. I was heart-broken. My loss was related to migration.
I was losing my place of birth, my language, my heritage, and most importantly of all, my grandparents. I was particularly close to my maternal grandmother, and moving country meant leaving her behind. My parents were migrating – and I was going with them. As with most loss, the situation was not of my choosing.
My life has been punctuated by loss. By losses of all sorts. Some of these losses were easier to bear than others. I have attempted to work through these losses – and even learn and grow from each experience. My working life has also involved loss – listening to losses experienced by others, and helping them cope in their own way with these losses. I’ve sat with people in rooms filled with memories and images of past loss. In rooms where people talked and talked and cried and cried about their losses.
Each of us copes differently with our losses. However, by listening to each other, and learning from our collective experiences, we each become more individually empowered.
Grief is the pain of loss. Grief is a state of distress associated with different types of loss. Grief is an inner psychological experience in response to loss. It is possible for people to hide this experience from themselves. Sometimes, it’s just too hard to confront the enormity of the situation – and the depth of the pain. In grief, it’s easy to turn to the dubious comforts of alcohol and drugs – and to drive the pain away. At least for a while. Distancing ourselves from the psychological pain can end up in expressing our distress in physical symptoms. Often these symptoms can be just annoying, but at times, they can masquerade as more serious illness.
Once a client whom I was seeing for counseling observed, ‘It would be good if there was a pill for grief. Can’t someone come up with a pill that will take away the sorrow and give me a sense of peace?’
This client is not alone in her wish for some magical relief, without the pain of experiencing the sorrow. But, in reality, there is no machine to drain away all the sorrow, nor is there a laser treatment to correct the pain. Most importantly, there is no quick-fix when it comes to grief.
In fact, it might be said that the chemical calm afforded by drugs might impede the working through of our grief. It is understandable that people would like to avoid the pain, but ‘good grief’ will mean recovery, growth and change.
The wounded heart needs attention. The grieving heart needs time to mend and heal, and to strengthen. However, time alone, is not enough to heal the wounds of the heart. There is work involved in grieving.
Grieving is not easy. To express our sadness may seem a most natural life experience. Yet, we live in a society that sometimes wants to deny that loss and change can be disruptive and grieving might threaten the hope of eternal happiness.
It is important to understand that grief-work – understanding your grief, resolving your grief – and moving on – helps to empower you. Grieving is a healing process. Good grief leads to good health.
This book presents a practical approach. A practical approach that offers discussion and some ideas about how to cope with the complexity of emotions that comprise grief. Importantly, this book acknowledges the importance of giving permission to grieve, a reassurance that grieving and withdrawal from the world in order to regenerate, is normal. It gives permission to feel the pervasive sense of sadness and loss.
You will read about other people’s stories of coping with loss and grief and how they moved on with their lives. You will be given information to help you make sense of your experience and tasks to encourage you to be active in your grief-work. You will be encouraged to read and write through your grief. You will gain a greater understanding of how you can cope with your loss and move forward with your life. Your self-awareness will be heightened and your coping strategies strengthened.
Loss is part of our daily life. The grieving process also is part of our daily life. From loss, through grief, we move towards adaptation and a renewed sense of coherence in daily life. ‘Good grief’ provides people with the opportunity of leaving behind the past with its losses and moving forward to the present and into the future with its potential gains.
THE SHADOWS OF LOSS
‘Is
there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of
my grief?’
William Shakespeare [Romeo and Juliet]
Loss and grief: Part of our daily life
‘It was on Good Friday that Miss Bendix lost her faith. She had really lost it before then, but, as is often the case with losses, she did not notice that anything was missing for some time after it had gone.’
Naomi
Royde-Smith [Miss Bendix, 1938]
Changes and losses occur during our lifetimes. They are sometimes expected, often unwanted and usually unwelcome. We might feel as if we’ve been dealt a duff hand, but learning skills and strategies to help us in our loss can ensure that the grieving process will proceed smoothly, and we will achieve ‘good grief’. Learning how to use ‘good grief’ to our advantage is very powerful in helping us to cope.
Grieving can be a long and arduous journey. Doing grief-work ensures that you will move from disorganization to reorganization and from pain to gain. As with most work, in grief-work, your rewards depend on the amount of effort you put into the process of healing yourself to face life after loss.
How do we begin to understand the turning-point that is loss? How do we learn to ease the pain of grief? Perhaps examining an old Jewish story is our starting point. Called The first tear, it poetically expresses loss, grief and adaptation.
The first tear
‘After Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden, God saw their repentance. He felt pity for them and said, “Poor children! I have punished you for your transgressions and have driven you out of the Garden of Eden, where you lived without worry and grief. Now you are entering a world full of unhappiness and grief. But you shall come to know that I am generous and that my love for you is infinite. I know that in the world you will encounter much adversity and it will sadden your lives. Therefore, I shall bestow upon you my most precious treasure, the costly pearl – the tear. When your hearts are about to break, the pain becomes unbearable and grief overwhelms you, then this tear will fall from your eyes, and immediately, the burden will be easier to bear.”
‘Hearing these words, Adam and Eve became numb with grief. Tears welled up in their eyes and streamed down their cheeks. Their tears fell upon the earth.
‘It was these tears of pain which first moistened the earth. And so Adam and Eve left behind a precious inheritance to their children. Ever since that first tear fell, when someone is in pain and feels great grief, tears flow from his eyes. And behold! The grief eases.’
From this story we come to understand that the recognition of the loss, the feelings that follow and the tears that result, can lead to a renewed sense of ease. This story is symbolic. Adam and Eve began their new life with loss.
Learning about Attachment and Loss
Judith Viorst, in Necessary Losses, begins by saying:
‘We begin with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car.’
Confronting as these sentences are, they are nevertheless, true. Judith Viorst points out that loss begins within the first moments of life, and continues unabated through childhood and follows us into every aspect of our adulthood. Her thesis is that these losses are painful but they are necessary. Necessary losses are the high cost of living a meaningful life.
Judith Viorst says:
‘Our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety – and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal.’
Loss, in its many forms, is a fact of life. Rabbi Harold Kushner rightly pointed out that – bad things do happen to good people. Grief visits us all. And when it does, life seems to lose its meaning. However, a satisfying and meaningful life is possible after loss – if our grief is resolved.
For successful resolution to occur, some basic assumptions and ways of being in the world are challenged. First, loss can challenge our closely held assumptions of personal invulnerability. Most of us know that bad things happen but we may believe that they happen to other people. Secondly, loss challenges an assumption that the world is meaningful and just and that things happen for a good reason. Thirdly, loss challenges our assumption that if we are ‘good’ people and ‘play by the rules’ then bad things will not happen to us.
Some losses may violate more greatly these assumptions than others. Generally speaking, the ‘greater’ the loss, the greater the violation of our assumptions about the world and our place in it.
We may begin with loss, but paradoxically, we also learn attachment very early in life. When attachment is threatened or when attachment between people or between people and something important to them is interrupted – they feel a sense of loss.
John Bowlby, the famous English psychiatrist, developed a theory around attachment and loss. He believed that by the end of the first year, most infants have usually developed a strong attachment to their parents – particularly to their mothers. Close attachment is as important to the infant as food and drink.
Attachment behavior is crucial for the infant’s survival. It encourages the child to maintain contact with those around him or her who appear able to cope with the world.
In the face of possible danger, the infant feels more secure in being close to its mother. Studies have shown that when faced with threatened or actual separation from its mother, the child becomes anxious and demonstrates its wish to be close to her. Attachment, therefore, ensures that the child has a secure base from which to explore the world.
Attachment can grow throughout the months and years of the child’s life – but this ability to attach – to establish relationships and closeness with other people appears to be present from birth.
Interestingly, researchers have found that it takes about 36 months for a child to feel and behave psychologically as if she or he were an individual in their own right – separate from their mother. At that point, the child learns that she or he is not merely an extension of the mother. However, to cope with this early separation experience, the child often turns to what is called a ‘transitional object’ or ‘security blanket’ as evidenced in Linus’s blanket (from the Peanuts comic strip). For some children, this security blanket is soft, such as a pillow, teddy bear or blanket – and it is recognizable by its odor. Typically, this security blanket is held for solace when the child is feeling vulnerable or at bed-time. For most children, this transitional object they have become attached to is a normal stage of development and their particular security blanket is discarded when it’s no longer needed.
To have and have not
Infants need nourishment, warmth and comfort. If these needs are not met, the baby protests loudly. We carry this early ‘have and have not’ principle with us into childhood and adulthood. We all develop a set of assumptions and expectations that certain people will be there and certain things will happen. When any of our attachments are broken, we discover loss.
For very young children who don’t yet understand words, loss and change can make them very vulnerable. It is impossible to explain to an infant or toddler that mommy is in hospital, but will return soon or that the child itself will be in hospital for a few days for its own good. Young children exist in a world where they ‘have or have not’ – either their needs are met – or they are not met.
However, children do learn about loss by experimenting with loss through game-playing. Hide-and-seek and peek-a-boo allow children to begin learning that nothing ever stays quite the same in life. Children learn that people can go away and come back. Such temporary loss is also experienced by children who are separated from their mothers, or their ‘mothering’ source. We have all witnessed small children crying when parted from their source of mothering. Some will cry until the ‘mother’ returns. Researchers have found that if the loss continues then children can become depressed. The patterns of crying and even screaming will give way to a withdrawn kind of behavior. This withdrawn behavior, for example, sitting quietly in the corner may be mistaken for settled behavior or ‘good behavior’. In fact, the child is grieving the temporary loss.
All sorts of minor losses are experienced in childhood. A best friend moves away to another city, a favorite toy goes missing, a special sweater or dress or pair of trousers becomes too small and is thrown away. There is also a sense of loss associated with moving away from everything that is familiar at pre-school to the strangeness of ‘big school’.
Of course, not all of these losses will be experienced intensely. Some will create sadness and fear and others merely a passing regret. It is through such losses that we learn that nothing stays the same forever and that some losses are more quickly accepted than others.
Our attachment behavior offers us completeness and protection in our lives. When we lose our attachment to someone or something, our safe world can become a frightening place. As everything we have known and relied upon is turned upside down, we temporarily lose our way in our lives.
From Minor Loss to Death is Forever
Although there is some dispute as to when a child will understand the concept of death, it is clear that the child given a clear and accurate explanation about death is at an advantage.
Life is full of death images – dead plants, insects, family pets and many images on television, including cartoons. Children will vary in their rate of development – and in their understanding. However, information about death which is hesitantly imparted or confusing, will lead to confusion for the child.
Some theorists believe that children are better able to understand and accept death than adults. Perhaps because children are busy learning new concepts every day, their minds are unclouded by the assumptions and expectations around what we believe and how we should behave. For children, information should be given simply, in a straight-forward manner.
When young children play ‘Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!’ games, adults may believe that is proof that children don’t understand death at all. Such games are experiments in new notions of power, with the children swapping roles and ‘killing’ each other. Perhaps through such games children are able to explore the complexity of the world in which they live and gradually learn how to cope with concepts like power, being out of control and death.
The learning continues for us all through childhood into adolescence and adulthood, with a range of possible losses: loss of some aspect of our identity, loss of expectations, loss of familiar surroundings, loss of a role or a job, separation and divorce. Each new situation of loss will teach us something further about the world in which we live – and ourselves.
The learning continues
So while we may be born with loss – and be forced to face the world without ‘an apartment, charge plate, a job or a car’, as Judith Viorst suggests, we also are born with an ability to attach to others. And we are born with the ability to learn to attach meaning to people and things in the world around us.
If this meaning is important, then the attachment to the people or things becomes important.
This attachment behavior can be transferred from one experience or situation to another. In this way, we learn from childhood, through adolescence into adulthood how to manage our life circumstances. Similar situations, or perceived similarities are put into familiar categories in our mind. So that the meanings we give to attachment and loss are transferable. So too are the consequences. The things that we have learnt.
Our lives are a series of makings and breakings of affectional bonds. Sometimes people report a ‘searching’ behavior in the face of their affectional losses. On elderly woman, Dorothy, 78, told me that a recent loss of a friend had brought to mind for her a fear of memories long buried.
She cried as she recalled the loss of her ten week old daughter, 58 years earlier. Her daughter had died of an infection, which had almost killed Dorothy as well. Dorothy said that her guilt and grief had not been expressed all those years ago. People around her said that the baby was so beautiful that God needed her more than she did. People said that it was God’s will and that she should not cry nor be sad. People said she should not grieve and that she would soon have another child. In this respect, they were right. Dorothy did have another child within eighteen months, but she secretly never forgot about her daughter.
Dorothy spoke about how she has always remembered her daughter’s birthdays, looked around her for girls, then women, of the right age and tried to imagine what her daughter would be like. Dorothy cried when she said she felt ashamed when for months after her daughter’s death she would look in prams, searching for her dead baby. She knew her baby was dead, but it didn’t stop Dorothy from searching for her. She was too embarrassed to tell her family and friends of her ‘searching’ behavior, because they all wanted her to forget about her child.
Another woman, Beryl, 68, said that for about ten months after her husband’s death, she would hear his keys in the front door at 6:15pm, see him in the garden, or sitting in his favorite chair and she continued to set a place for him at the dinner table.
Although seemingly irrational, when a major affectional bond is broken, some people try desperately to replace the missing person. Their rational mind tells them that ‘searching’ and ‘seeing’ their baby, their partner, or their parent is not possible, yet the remnants of their attachment result in such searches and sightings.
The meaning of loss
Attachment, loss and adaptation to loss are part of the human experience. And it is from our experience that we learn to cope with the loss – we adapt to the loss as part of our journey towards recovery. It is not always obvious that this is happening. Often, we might think we have lost our way. We might fear that we’ll never not feel a sense of loss and grief.
When we experience loss, we experience a break with an affinity to someone or something. We have lost an attachment. People can become attached to all sorts of things: human beings, expectations, jobs, prestige, money, home and other possessions. Often we take appearance and health for granted. However, when someone loses a breast or an arm or they become seriously ill, then they begin to understand the importance of their attachment to – and affinity with – their body. In this way, it becomes easy to recognize that when a person’s attachment to someone or something is disrupted, and a loss ensues, then this triggers off the deepest grief.
In her book, Grief: The Mourning After, Catherine M. Sanders, PhD, says the following about loss and grief:
‘If we examine the typical life cycle of most Americans, we can reasonably expect that losses will occur to all of us for one reason for another. Yet, strangely, if not surprisingly, grief is denied by most until we are confronted head-on with a loss of our own. If we form attachments to family members, friends, spouses, homes, jobs, we will eventually have to relinquish that person or thing to whom the attachment was made. Letting go represents the ultimate pain of grief.’
Our lives are full of losses – and feelings of grief. Grief can hurt so much – physically, emotionally and psychically. Letting go of someone or something dear to us is extremely painful. The insecurity we can feel after a loss is frightening.
While some losses hardly affect us, others can have long and painful effects that shadow us into the future.
For some of us, a major loss may visit early in childhood with, for instance, the death of a grandparent. Others of us seemingly escape significant loss experiences until our adulthood. However, all of us experience loss in smaller or larger ways. We are each unique. Each of us will have unique experiences. And as individuals, we all react differently.
Losses can occur on two levels: actual and symbolic. An actual loss occurs when a significant person dies, when we lose a body part, when we experience separation and divorce and when we lose our jobs.
A symbolic loss is generally related to an actual loss. For instance, when a man loses his job, much of his feeling of loss involves his sense of depleted ego identity. A job can define our role in life. Without the job, the solid sense of self that is attached to the role is lost. Another illustration is that involving death of a child. The grieving parent might see the child as an extension of herself. Symbolically, then, when the child dies, part of the parent dies as well.
What are life losses?
A life loss is one that causes a change in our lives. These life losses range from the most obvious one, like a death, to less tangible and abstract losses like loss of trust, innocence, hopes and dreams and expectations. Note that the latter losses are symbolic ones.
Recently, it has been recognized that events like divorce and miscarriage also provoke strong grief reactions in us. But other types of losses also take their toll: losing a job, losing a friendship, infertility, failing memory and loss of independence can all cause us to grieve.
Sometimes it’s hard for people to understand how seemingly positive events like traveling, getting married, starting a new job or moving home voluntarily can be felt like a form of loss. Loss, change and grief are interconnected.
Any change we experience contains the potential for loss – and growth. Not recognizing a loss can become a source of stress. However, if the loss is accepted, the feelings of grief become accessible to us and the state of stress we feel can be resolved.
Recognizing the connection between loss and change means we can understand why so many people are puzzled about their feelings of disappointment and lack of joy at times when they believe they ought to be experiencing much joy and sense of satisfaction.
Being promoted, completing a difficult task, getting married, having children, changing jobs, retiring are all examples of times when there are changes which entail invisible losses. There might be the loss of freedom and of independence, saying farewell to old roles, cherished dreams, excitement and involvement. We can feel ‘let down’. This ‘let-down’ factor can follow hard on the absolute joy and relief and satisfaction of having achieved our goals. Complicating this ‘let down’ feeling is the intensity of other feelings – our guilt and shame at not being more happy and relieved. We might wonder what is wrong with us. Instead of feeling elated, we might feel mildly deflated. We might feel confused and disgruntled. However, at a conscious level, we might not make the connection between the apparent success and the ‘let down’ feeling. In fact, some people become irritated if such a connection is pointed out to them. On the face of things, it doesn’t make sense.
These ‘let downs’ might be referred to as ‘success depressions’ and they can be relieved by recognizing the loss and doing some grief-work at the level that is necessary. The grief-work involved in accepting the loss of freedom which new parenthood brings might be quite different from that involved in adjusting to retirement; both of these will be radically different from the grief-work involved in accepting the loss of a significant person in our lives.
Echoes of the past
One loss can remind us of another, previous loss. At times, this reminder is not a conscious one. Nevertheless, a current loss can trigger feelings connected with a past loss. For instance, not getting that much wanted promotion at work might trigger a similar sense of loss you felt when you didn’t get into graduate school or make it into the school orchestra.
A female client, a woman in her forties came for counseling, concerned about her reaction to a lover’s rejection. As she verbalized her despair, I began to understand that her sense of loss and feelings of pain were not only related to the loss of this man, but also to previous, equally crushing losses of significant people in her life.
Frances had not made the connection – at least not consciously. But what she told me allowed me to see the connection – and to help her gain insight into the history of losses in her life and the links between them.
Frances had had a difficult relationship with her father, who left the family home when she was 12. She didn’t see him again until she was 18. She describes him as a ‘distant man’ but one she admired for his achievements and strength of character. When she made contact with him at 18, at her instigation, she found him to be much warmer and ‘fatherly’ than she had remembered. For a year, she enjoyed his company every second week-end and she grew close to him. Ironically, it was when their relationship was at its best point that she lost him – forever. Her father died in a motor accident and as Frances said, ‘I never got the chance to say goodbye’. So painful was this for Frances that she spent many years driving her pain inward, not allowing any tears to flow – and becoming sexually promiscuous.
At 30, she settled down and married. Two years later she had a son. Again, not consciously, Frances invested a lot of emotional energy in her son and she became the ‘perfect mother’. But several years later, after hearing stories of her husband’s infidelity, she decided to have an affair herself.
As she tells the story all these years later, she’s surprised how ‘calculated’ her decision had been. At the time, it seemed ‘you know, natural – like, well, if he can, so can I’.
Sitting with her, I sensed she had become aware of some of her psychological processes – she had gained some insight. She had decided to reject her husband, before she, was rejected by him. She flaunted her affair, whereas he had been discreet. She laughed at herself, saying ‘it was the old case of the wife hearing rumors and being the last to find out’.
But her unresolved grief over her father’s death had made her vulnerable. She wasn’t going to be rejected by another man. Frances had made sure her marriage was in jeopardy. After her separation and divorce, Frances said she lived life to the full. Then she met her lover and settled down. She dreamed of a blissful relationship with him. He was sensitive and warm and they shared many interests. So how could he leave her after five years? Frances was disbelieving at first. Then she was mad. Finally, she was distraught.
She sobbed and sobbed. She looked up at me and said, ‘Life isn’t fair. Brendan left me. My husband left me. My father left me. And my son will leave me soon. Why does everyone leave me? I think I’ll have to give up relationships with men. I can’t suffer another loss’.
Yes, Frances, you’re right – life isn’t fair. I acknowledged her pain and her sense of loss. I asked her how she saw herself responding to these losses.
She said she didn’t know. Ah-ha. Maybe that was the problem. Frances had a revelation. Maybe she had never grieved at each loss point. Just maybe her losses were mounting in their enormity after each experience – because unfinished business was carried forward. The cumulative effects of unfinished business can be very traumatic. She had said it. Brendan had left her, her husband had left her and before him, her father had left her. Each loss was experienced, but her feelings had been left unfinished. What’s more, Frances is right. In the future, her son will leave her. How will she cope with that if she hasn’t grieved for her previous losses?
Frances and I decided we should work towards Frances resolving her sense of loss – in retrospect – and each loss was to be laid to rest. That way, new losses would not trigger old loss feelings. At the very least, she could feel more confident in dealing with any future losses, knowing she has been able to resolve past ones.
Over the next few sessions, Frances moved from feeling like she got all the bad breaks to resolving not to feel and behave like a ‘good-bye girl’. She laughed as she recalled the humor of The Good-bye Girl, the movie starring Richard Dreyfus and Marsha Mason. It tells the story of a young woman, who comes to believe that her life is a string of relationship loss – and that she will remain the ‘good-bye girl’ to men forever more. This sort of unresolved grief can happen, when a person, for whatever reasons, has not done their ‘good grief’ work.
Making our losses conscious and making connections between our losses is the start of a process which helps us move to a point where we are not scared of facing new losses. That’s the process that Frances embarked on. And it helped her change her image of herself as a woman who is always rejected by the important men in her life.
Looking at the history of our life losses can help us understand what we’ve been through – and remind us of how we have coped – and will cope again.
Making connections between the loss, your views about that loss – and the decision you made at the time – and your present predicament may move you towards a more sound resolution.
Remember, if you don’t deal with the thoughts and feelings around your life loss – your issues around grieving remain unresolved. Simply saying, ‘I’ll deal with it when I feel stronger’, or ‘I’ll look at all this some day’ is not enough. Unresolved loss – and unresolved grief – stay with us and affect our coping style, in the present and into the future.
A good way to look at your losses and to ponder which losses you have dealt with and which might still be unresolved is by drawing a life-line of life losses.
Exercise: A life-line of life losses
This exercise can be very powerful. You might have an intensely emotional experience in doing this task. Try to stay with your thoughts and feelings – and write them out at the end.
Directions
Sit in a comfortable position. Clear your mind of the immediate thoughts you have. Concentrate on your task of looking at your life-line and marking your life losses.
Take a clean piece of paper – or a new leaf in your journal and draw a horizontal line across the paper. Put a dot at each end of the line. The left hand dot represents your birth date – write this under the dot. The right hand line represents the current date – write this also under the dot.
Look carefully at this line. Study it. Now, mark with a vertical line each five-year period of your life. Let this chronology settle into your consciousness.
When you are ready, chart your life losses chronologically along the five-year bands.
Draw a line starting at 0 and marking 5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40….up to the next five years of your life.
Be as accurate as you can be in this task.
For instance your chart might look like this:
5 years – grandfather died
7 years – sister born
8 years – moved home
10 years – pet dog died
18 years – moved away from home
22 years – mother sick
26 years – got married
29 years – first child
32 years – second child
35 years – mother died
37 years – husband out of work
40 years – marriage difficulties
42 years – divorce
45 years – father died
50 years…..
Exercise: Writing out your thoughts and feelings
When you have drawn your chart, take a good look. When was your first life loss? What was this first loss? Are there any periods where more than one loss occurred around the same time?
Now, you might like to add to your chronological chart, the decisions you made and the changes that occurred in your life as a result of a particular loss.
This life-line graph – your chronology of life losses gives you the opportunity of understanding your loss history and how you have coped. And how you might be affected by a current – or a possible loss. Have any of these losses been unresolved? If so, take your pen and write whatever comes into your mind about your thoughts and feelings about that loss.
Recall one key loss in your life narrative.
Is there anything else you’d like to write about regarding your losses?
Look back over what you have written. Are you surprised by anything? If so, what? Now, put your writing aside. Leave it for a few days, maybe even a week.
Then take it out and look at it afresh.
You might learn something else about how you cope with your life losses by coming back to your chart and your writings after putting them aside. Sometimes, we develop different ways of seeing things after we’ve had a chance to process them in our minds. Maybe you’ll be surprised by some discoveries about yourself.
Remember, learning to understand yourself and your coping style is the first step in your recovery. It is the first step in learning to cope with life after loss.
Types of losses
It is important to familiarize ourselves with losses – small and large, minor and major. Paying attention to smaller losses might help us to better understand loss as part of our daily life. By reflecting on the way smaller losses affect our lives, we can partially prepare for the inevitable major losses we all experience.
Losses can be grouped into categories. One such categorization of losses is divided into five parts:
1. Loss of a significant person (through death, separation or divorce)
2. Loss of part of the self:
(a) physical loss (loss or damage to part of the body or to body functions)
(b) psychological loss (loss of self-esteem, status, ideals, hopes, control, independence, choice)
(c) social loss (moving home, loss of employment)
(d) cultural loss (social network changes, spiritual changes, migration)
3. Loss of possessions (personal items such as property, jewelry, money)
4. Developmental loss (adolescence, starting school, leaving school, marriage, middle age, old age)
5. Loss of freedom (loss of mobility, sense of confinement, imprisonment)
Adapted from Simons
Looking at this category of losses and changes, you might think that some are temporary losses and changes. However, a person’s response to even a temporary loss can be complicated. For example, if your car is stolen and subsequently, you get it back, the loss is not permanent. Nevertheless, at the time, it would feel permanent. Not only that, some people have reported that they view their car differently, less positively, because of its temporary loss.
In one sense, the fifth category, ‘loss of freedom’ is closely related to the second category in that there is a loss of part of the self at various levels, for instance, psychological loss, social loss and cultural loss.
Exercise: Categorizing your losses
Look at your life line from the previous exercise. Examine your life line and determine into which of the following categories your examples fit. For instance, your losses may be mainly related to loss of significant people, or you may have experienced psychological losses along with developmental losses as well.
Categories of losses
Loss of significant person – mother, father, sister, brother, baby or child, grandparents, uncle, aunt, friend
Loss of external object – money, house, photos, jewelry, property, personal possessions, pets
Developmental loss – birth, childhood, starting school, leaving school, adulthood, marriage, divorce, retirement, old age
Loss of part of the self
(a) physical – illness, stroke, arthritis, infertility, amputation, blindness, deafness, menopause
(b) social – status, roles, house, infertility
(c) psychological – trauma, memory, control, esteem, pride, ideals, freedom, independence, status or job
(d) community – religion, culture, networks
Adapted from McBride
Remember, losses may overlap one or more categories. For instance, loss of employment would fit the category ‘loss of external object’ but may also mean loss of social status (loss of part of self: social) and loss of pride (loss of part of self: psychological).
Remember also, that some experiences of loss comprise events that everyone experiences. For example, those developmental losses involved in moving from childhood to adolescence and then to adulthood. However, there are also unique experiences. For instance, not everyone experiences failure to be admitted to a much wanted educational course, or a bankruptcy.
Sometimes, people may not associate some events with a loss, or at least, not appreciate the potential for an event to symbolize a loss. For instance, women who have experienced rape often talk about the loss of control, of loss of trust, loss of self-worth and sometimes loss of innocence, all of which are psychological losses.
After completing this exercise, take five minutes to reflect on what you have learnt. Write down three things you have learnt.
Writing through your loss and grief
Writing is a powerful form of expression for grieving people. It is a form of therapy, which can be done any time of the day or night. You can choose when to write and when you won’t. Some people have called journals ‘the paper psychiatrists’.
Rabbi Earl A. Grollman in his book, When Someone You Love Has Alzheimer’s, says of journal writing: ‘A journal is a place where you can say anything you wish without being pitied, judged, criticized, or made uncomfortable. There is a difference between writing your thought and speaking them out loud in public. ‘Journaling’ helps you to express your feelings, especially when you feel isolated and find it difficult to communicate with others.’
You are invited to use writing as a way of healing.
You can write by hand, in a notebook or a journal with a favorite pen. Or you can write electronically – but it’s important for you to print out what you write, so that you can touch it, see it and read it.
Remember, that writing can bring to the surface painful emotions and memories. It can be part of your grief-work to recognize that this is happening and to pay attention to such feelings. It is important that you assess how much you can face your feelings at any point in time. However, it is equally important for you to be aware that denying your feelings, distracting yourself and busying yourself with activities might act to push your feelings down. In the long-term, such unresolved feelings not faced and dealt with may compound, resurface and delay your grief-work.
Keeping a journal of your thoughts and feelings might work for you. ‘Prompts for your pen’ exercises throughout these pages will help you record and work on your loss and grief.
Writing, in a journal:
• is a way to explore and gain understanding of your emotions
• clarifies thought
• records information
• allows expression of feeling
• is a non-judgmental friend
• provides a place to escape from reality for a while
• can be done anyplace, anytime
• assists the writer to come to terms with things
• fosters creativity
• puts loss into a tangible perspective
• is a safe venue for processing fear, anger, guilt and other emotions you can explore.
Some views on writing as healing
Many famous writers have openly written or implied that: writing helped them heal, writing changed their lives or that writing itself, saved their lives. Celebrated writers who found writing healing include: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Anais Nin, Isabel Allende, Simone de Beauvoir, Jamaica Kincaid, May Sarton, Anne Morrow Linbergh, Alice Walker, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, C. S. Lewis.
Ray Bradbury, writing in Zen in the Art of Writing, said:
‘So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all…Writing is survival… Not to write, for many of us, is to die.’
Jamaica Kincaid’s view is similar to Ray Bradbury’s and expressed in the following lines:
‘I became a writer out of desperation… When I was young, younger than I am now, I started to write about my own life and I came to see that this act saved my life.’
Simone de Beauvoir chronicled her mother’s illness and death and her reactions to the experience in A Very Easy Death. Simone de Beauvoir was surprised that she needed to write through her experience, because she did not expect her mother’s death to ‘shake me so deeply’. She begins the book by marking the day that she heard of her mother’s accident. She was in Rome when she heard that her mother had sustained a fracture, which was the beginning of investigations that led to a diagnosis of cancer. It is interesting that Simone de Beauvoir, like many others, recalls the day, date and time of hearing the news. She writes:
‘At four o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday, 24 October 1963, I was in Rome, in my room at the Hotel Minerva; I was to fly home the next day and I was putting papers away when the telephone rang.’
In telling their stories, grieving people often begin by informing the listener of these exact details. The details are a marker and almost indelibly imprinted on people’s memories. It’s the beginning of the story.
Mark Doty offers writing as healing to help us come to terms with our challenges. He wrote in Heaven’s Coast: ‘What is healing, but a shift in perspective?’
By keeping a journal and writing, you may find your necessary shift in perspective.
The healing shifts for Virginia Woolf came from her writing about psychic wounds. She believed that our moments of profound insight come from writing about our soulful and honest examination of our psychic wounds – and these should be called ‘shocks’. These ‘shocks’ act to force us into a greater awareness of ourselves and our relationship to others and our place in the world.
Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, remarked that writing, not only for her, but for us all, can be ‘a matter of necessity and that you write to save your life is really true and so far it’s been a very sturdy ladder out of the pit.’
In Isabel Allende’s Paula, a memoir about her daughter’s terminal illness and death, she describes how she began writing her famous novel, House of the Spirits. Originally, it was meant to be a farewell letter to her elderly grandfather, whom she was unable to visit. Allende was in exile, but she began House of the Spirits as ‘an anecdote about my great-aunt Rosa, my grandfather’s first sweetheart, a young girl of almost supernatural beauty who had died in mysterious circumstances shortly before they were to marry.’
Allende continued to write as if in a trance – she felt she was ‘unwinding a ball of yarn’. In fact, her personal letter to her grandfather grew into a 500 page manuscript. Allende says that writing House of the Spirits ‘saved my life’. She began the book as a form of self-care, to express her grief and through writing she said, ‘the world became more tolerable. Living with myself was more tolerable too.’
Allende recalls how her literary agent, Carmen Balcells encouraged her to write of her pain and desperation after her daughter, Paula, lapsed into a coma. Carmen deposited ‘a ream of lined yellow paper’ into Allende’s lap.
“My poor Isabel,” Balcells said. “Here, take this and write. Unburden your heart; if you don’t you are going to die of anguish.”
Allende protested that something inside her had ‘broken’ and she believed she would never write again. However, Balcells commanded Allende to ‘write a letter to Paula. It will help her know what happened while she was asleep.’ Balcells encouraged Allende to write, knowing that without the release of words, Allende’s health would suffer. Balcells feared that Allende might succumb to a serious illness in the wake of her daughter’s condition and Allende’s grief.
Allende wrote to her comatose daughter, ‘I plunge into these pages in an irrational attempt to overcome my terror. I think that perhaps if I give form to this devastation I shall be able to help you, and myself, and that the meticulous exercise of writing can be our salvation.’
For writing to be a healing experience, we need to honor our loss, pain and grief. We need to witness our thoughts and feelings instead of denying them or ignoring them. By doing this work, we are likely to experience a shift in our perspective, as Mark Doty suggests.
Your writing can
take any form you wish. Keeping a journal, writing stories or poems
are all ways of getting in touch with your feelings and your grief.
Prompts for your pen
Exercise: Reflections on your healing through writing
• You can begin with a letter like Isabel Allende did. Can you transform it into a poem or story?
• Read D. H. Lawrence’s poem ‘Piano’
Softly, in the
dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of
year, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of
the tingling strings
And pressing the small poised feet of a
mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious
master of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to
belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And
hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now
it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great
black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me,
my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a
child for the past.
• Reflect on D. H. Lawrence’s poem. What does it mean to you? Can you relate to the sadness and nostalgia by reflecting on your own past? What memories does it stir for you?
• Are there any losses in your life you feel compelled to write about?
Why not keep a daily journal?
Perhaps you might
consider keeping a journal of your journey through grief.
Prompts for your pen
Exercise: Keeping a daily journal of my journey
Each day, record the following information:
• date and time of your entry at the top of each page
• a significant happening of the day
• a person who was most important to you today
• changes you observe happening to you
• your plans for tomorrow
• notes for yourself
People have reported that they find it helpful to write their journal at about the same time every day. Perhaps you might develop this habit and then your journaling will become second nature.
The importance of a daily journal will become clear weeks, months or maybe even years down the track. At times, you might feel you are making no progress, but by reading back through your journal, you will be reminded where you have been and how far you have come.
One important value of the journal is that it helps you to stay in charge of your grief experience. It provides a measure of guidance through the chaos of the experience and it helps you internalize the insights you have gained in your writing.
The
broken heart:
Understanding good grief
‘Life
must go on;
I forget just why.’
Edna St.
Vincent Millay [Lament]
In our future-oriented, scientific society, older wisdoms often are regarded as obsolete, as mere superstitions. Folk wisdom over the centuries told of an association between loss of a loved one and illness. A century ago, people would talk about dying of a ‘broken heart’. Today, such expressions are used only metaphorically. Yet, research findings highlight the validity of the notion that a grieving person is a ‘person at risk’. Studies have found that widows and widowers are in a category where the rate of illness or mortality is very high.
In 1961, the English psychiatrist George Engel compared loss with a physical wound. He pointed out that in both cases, the wound has to heal up. Dr Engel spoke about grief-work as the healthy process which slowly heals the wounds of the psyche. Much as a physical wound will fester if regenerating forces do not act as they should, so too with the psychic wound. If the healing forces of grief are out of action, the wound will not heal.
Dr Engel asked ‘Is grief a disease?’ We might respond by saying no, grief is not a disease. However, it can develop into one. It might be possible to die of a ‘broken heart’.
The yesteryear concept of dying of a ‘broken heart’ was updated by Dr Colin Murray Parkes and associates in a study of 4,500 British widowers, 55 years of age and older.
They found that the death rate during the first six months of grieving was 40% higher than that expected for married men the same age. Later in the grieving period, the rates for the widowers gradually fell to the married level. Interestingly, the greatest increase in mortality was in those who died from heart disease – the ‘broken heart’ idea of antiquity.
Later investigations similarly have shown that people in grief are both physically and mentally or psychically, under greater threat than others.
Dr James J. Lynch, a specialist in psychosomatic medicine wrote in The Broken Heart: the Medical Consequences of Loneliness:
‘A few hundred years ago ‘grief’ was openly recognized as a cause of death. Today, however, a broken heart would never be listed as a cause of death in any U.S. hospital. We have grown far too ‘medically wise’ to tolerate such an ill-defined diagnosis… Despite modern medical science’s reluctance to recognize the killing potential of human grief, most physicians are intuitively aware of its lethal power. While most physicians would never list ‘grief’ or ‘loneliness’ or a ‘broken heart’ as a cause of death, that does not mean they do not recognize the importance of these emotional factors in heart disease.’
It is possible to reconcile old and new ways of thinking. With out modern ways of understanding stress, we might have an explanation of how grief and illness are linked. The belief that ‘grief will make you sick’ is a folk saying that over a half a century ago, Dr Walter B. Cannon was exploring.
As a physiologist and pioneer in the role of emotions in bodily functioning, he believed that stress had a major role in creating illness. More recent findings have reported connections between asthma, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, a variety of heart diseases and hypertension – and grief. It is not understood clearly why grief should show itself in certain people in particular diseases, however, the suggestion has been made that stress is inextricably part of the picture.
In grief – the sense of loss and the challenges of meeting unwelcome changes – does produce stress. By understanding the possible physical and emotional aspects of grief, people will be able to protect themselves from additional stresses and illnesses. If a person avoids the pain and torment – and the feeling of mastery in overcoming the grief – then he or she might pay dearly for this avoidance in inadequate or uncompleted grief.
Experiencing ‘good grief’ and doing ‘grief-work’ is important. Inadequate attention to working through grief might lead to further stresses and illness – the wound may fester. The unfinished business of grief can lead to a grieving that never ends.
Remember: There are no fixed or prescribed ways of reacting to loss. People react to losses in very different ways. But there is always anguish and pain associated with loss. In fact, for some people, the pain can be so great that they turn to drugs or alcohol, in search of a solution through chemical comforts. While these chemical aids may be helpful and consoling in the short-term, they have the potential to create further problems.
While we are unique, some responses to losses are similar. It is generally agreed that death is the most significant loss. Death is final. And it reminds us of our mortality. However, our pain at losing a much cherished dream, being fired from work or being jilted can make us feel sad and down and we hurt. We are in pain.
Pain can begin with a confusing variety of emotions. Unanswerable questions become part of life.
Your loss may trigger any or all of the following states and emotions:
• Disbelief
• Shock
• Anger
• Confusion
• Loss of interests
• Guilt
• Insomnia
• Panic
• Anxiety
• Resentment
• Fear of losing control
• Bargaining
• Crying and sobbing
• Yearning and pining
• Depression
• Disorganization
• Denial
• Helplessness
• Loneliness
• Lowered self-esteem
The depth and duration of any of these states or emotions is very much an individual matter. Living with them is part of the process of coming to terms with them.
We must recognize the importance of our loss. Expressing our feelings and telling the story of our loss help us to understand the grief process. It is our task in the face of loss to find effective ways to cope. We need to get over the emotional pains and we need to let them go. Only by coping and letting go can be grow from this painful experience.