Honoring our Grief

As I’ve studied grief and been on my own grief journey these past six years, one of the most helpful tools I’ve found has been research done by Dr. William Worden. Dr. Worden has written a textbook called Grief Counseling & Grief Therapy, which is widely used around the world and is used as a standard reference on the subject.

For the past 50 years, our culture has used Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In looking further, what is not recognized is that Dr. Kubler-Ross designed the stages for people who were dying, not those grieving. Using Dr. Worden’s Tasks of Grieving as a better model helps those of us grieving our loved one identify where we are so we can move through our loss and better adapt to a different life.

For the next few blog posts, I will share Dr. Worden’s Tasks of Grieving to help us as we move through our grief journey. Like a map, we can see where we are as we move through our grief, remembering we don’t get over our loss; we get through it.

The first task of grief, according to Dr. William Worden, is to accept the loss. What happens here is our brains have to take in new information that it can’t quite believe or comprehend. Our loved one was just here; how can they be gone? Accepting the loss doesn’t come all at once. It takes time to let ourselves be convinced that our loved one is no longer with us. It may come in small ways when we see their coffee mug in the cupboard, knowing it won’t be used by them again. Or it may come in the form of a memorial service or funeral when we see their photo and the dates of their birth and their death. Acceptance of our loss as a reality helps us step into the process of grieving our loved one.

Because our grief journey is ours to take, it will be different than someone else. There is no time frame to say that we have to be done grieving after the first year. We must remind ourselves, we loved someone, we were attached to someone, and we will grieve.

At a recent conference I attended, psychologist and author Susan Zonnebelt-Smeenge (who is a part of the Grief Share curriculum) said, “Grief is an honor.” When we grieve, we are honoring our loved one. When we grieve, we are helping ourselves with God’s help, comfort, and strength to live a different life than we had before.

‘‘Grateful Yet Grieving’’

FREE ebook by Pam Luschei | Click HERE To Download

Whether it’s been less than a year or ten years since your loved one died, some things can bring it all to the marquee of your mind from out of nowhere. Last week, my daughter went for an X-ray. Upon arrival, she checked in with the woman at the desk. While looking at the computer screen, the woman repeated my daughter’s name, birthdate, and phone number.   However, the birthdate and phone number did not belong to my daughter. They belonged to her dad.

As my daughter explained the error, the woman apologized and said they had a new system and had not worked out all the glitches. It was a moment that came out of the blue to fully face the reality, once again, that her dad was gone. 

When I read the text from my daughter describing her experience, I felt an “ugh.” It was like falling into a ditch that I had been uprooted from and was now looking at with 3-D glasses.

We will always face those moments that remind us of our loved ones. Our minds are filled with memories that we carry from sights, smells, sounds, and sensations that arrive unannounced. I’ve discovered that when I welcome them as visitors and guests, they pass through. They don’t get to stay or permanently park. The grief is there. I sense the loss. It’s a reality that I recognize as I allow the feelings to come.

My pastor has said repeatedly, “Feelings tell you where you are, not who you are.” When I consider where I was in my first year of grieving and where I am now, I see a different landscape. Life after loss is remembering where we are is not where we stay.

Experiencing moments where we are transported back to what our lives looked like before we lost our loved one is to be expected. There will be ditches and glitches along the way. We can notice them and navigate them as we continue on our journey.

"Grateful Yet Grieving"

FREE ebook by Pam Luschei | Click HERE To Download