Why Grieving Matters
Unless you are living off-grid in a remote landscape, out of touch with the rest of the world, it is likely you have noticed a sense of intense malaise and despair in your community or even your self over the last few years. Political instability, an ongoing attempt to understand a worldwide pandemic, sensational news on tap at all hours of the day… collectively, our nervous systems are disoriented in a dark cloud of contemporary life. The emotions you may be experiencing- the panic, sadness, anger, yearning for a “before,” would be appropriately identified as grief.
Grieving matters because it is the process by which we digest the human experience of loss. No one can do it for us, and there is no magic pill. Grief is the inevitable payment of engaging with life as a conscious creature. Though grieving can bring us to our knees with humbling sorrow, it can also offer us perspective in what actually matters to us. It is as if the aperture of a camera has shifted, and everything is different than it was before. When we grieve a loss, we are shown with pointed clarity the meaningful experience of being human.
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.”
Dr. Earl Grollman
For many, grief may be first explored after a significant death loss. For others, they have had the emotional experience without ever even naming it- perhaps after a painful break-up, or not getting a job they desperately wanted. Grief does not only look like sadness and despair in the gut-wrenching aftermath of loss. It can also look like relief that pain has now ended for a loved one; an explosive anger at the unjustness of a loss; or even a total numbness that feels confusing or shameful. You may cycle through all of these feelings in an instant!
When we grieve, the oldest, most primal parts of our brain are activated via neural circuits, resulting in a deeply emotional and physical experience of sadness and pain. Mammals grieve as a natural expression of the pain of loss. Although it is an organic experience, who would want to feel this pain? We may move from a shocking, surreal unreality to a place a raging, profound sadness. We may find ourselves sucked in the purgatorial vortex of “Why?” and “Shoulds.” Throughout our grief, we may find ourselves desperately seeking relief from such a bewildering experience.
Grief is at once ubiquitous and unique. It is a normative, important process of moving through the most base of human experiences. We will all experience grief at some point, and it will be different for each person, for each loss. There are aspects of grief over which we have no control, as the waves wash over us while we try to hold our breath. Other aspects call for us to participate, to learn how to swim these new waters.
Lovis Corinth, Rising Moon, 1922
Each person’s grief experience is their own, however research on grief has found that there are ways of coping with grief that support movement rather than stagnation; integration rather than avoidantly moving on. For myself, grieving has felt like a gravitational pull of the moon, pulling at me as if tied to a string. While it may periodically relent in a cycle, the pull will return. As time has moved forward, I have learned the cues of when my grief pulls on me; I notice what emotions and bodily sensations come up, and use it as data that I need to directly engage with my loss experience. The pull is a call to pay attention! My grief needs tending. Over time and with support, I built capacity and trust that eventually, the pull would relax. I noticed that with that softening, I had less fear that I would get stuck in those painful emotions. They would return, and I would tend to them, and they would relent. The cycle would continue, and that was okay.
To grieve is to be changed- you are no longer exactly who you were. By giving yourself permission to engage with your grief in your own way, you may meet this new self. What worked in the past (e.g. soothing yourself with mind-melting hours of Netflix binging to numb out), may no longer work (... because of course your deceased loved one’s favorite song will play in the background!) Part of grieving is learning a new self, a new normal, and a new way of feeling. In what can be an isolating experience, support and community become powerful allies in grief. While it is a path that only you can walk, you don’t have to do it alone. Grief support groups, grief therapists, friends who have experienced loss, and other grieving family members can all help us as we learn how to grieve.
Through intentional engagement with your grief, it is possible for that terrifying grief monster that feels like it is trying to swallow us whole can shift to a companion we learn to live with. Grieving matters because the relationship with your loved one matters. Actively grieving helps us learn how to carry them within us long after they are gone.