Notes
Brought to you by:
- I’ve Been Thinking… – Maria Shriver
- What if there’s no such thing as closure – Meg Bernhard, New York Times
I’ve experienced a heightened sense of most emotions in the last couple of years. Connection to friends went deeper, discomfort lasted longer, and joy was incredibly fleeting and powerful. But the emotion that kept resurfacing and never seemed to leave my heart was grief. I was curious about why this particularly frustrating and confusing emotion wouldn’t let me be. As usual, I found answers in books and in the writings of others who seemed to feel the way I did.
Grieving is crucial
In “I’ve Been Thinking”, author Maria Shriver wrote a chapter titled “It’s OK – in fact it’s crucial – to grieve”. This small four page section started my entire thought process around the theme of grief. I used to believe that the ache of grief waned in time; that even if we didn’t ever address it, we’d be rewarded for holding out. This is absolutely not the reality I’ve experienced.
Shriver, among other writers and researchers, have said that grief can resurface – even decades later – if we didn’t give ourselves the time we needed to address and process it. Yet, the only thing we’ve learned to do is “look at the bright side”. Years of this conditioning has left our society thirsty for the knowledge of how to deal with a feeling like grief. I now understand that if waves of sadness from grief are coming on, we need to let ourselves feel in the moment, and learn how to express it. The stubbornness of grief won’t wait until we’re ready.
Loss can be ambiguous
Earlier this year, I came across a beautiful New York Times piece by Meg Bernhard titled, “What if there’s no such thing as closure”. I sent it to everyone I could think of; it turned out that others in my life found it as equally impactful as I did. I was thoroughly drawn to a few components about grief that I hadn’t thought about before.
Grief isn’t always discernible. Sometimes, we aren’t able to pinpoint exactly what we’re grieving. Researcher and therapist Pauline Boss coined this term as “ambiguous loss”. These types of losses are “not just of life but of livelihood, of possibility, of dreams, of plans, of things that seemed certain yesterday”. It’s a term that anyone can conjure up an example for. A term that, during the pandemic, represented the many losses we all faced.
Boss also points out that the issue with grief is the notion that we’re supposed to come to some sort of “resolution”. We’re supposed to move through it and then be done with it (problematic models such as the “five stages of grief” contribute to this unproductive narrative). However, ambiguous losses are “unclear and with no resolution”. It’s as difficult as it is simple. Thoroughly real and yet completely unmeasurable. And still, defining it has brought clarity and comfort to me in a life that is anything but easy.
(If you have a subscription to NYT and want to read the full article, visit this link)
Reflections
The quiet, reflective space these last two years had me thinking a lot about my mom. About how her death and my unprocessed grief is still affecting me and my family relationships in unrealized ways. I’ve also thought about how I’ve grieved much more than losses of loved ones in my 34 years of life. I’ve grieved lost identities (when did I become an adult?) and seen new mothers do the same. I’ve grieved the languishing of friendships, even the ones that I knew weren’t ultimately destined to work out. I’ve grieved the loss of time that the pandemic ripped away. I’ve grieved the paths not chosen.
I’ve also learned a few things that help me cope with grief when it inevitably resurfaces. I’ve learned that grief isn’t always thrust upon us, but that we can purposefully seek it out. Sometimes, we know we need to change something, and the best way through that change is to allow ourselves to grieve what was or what could have been.
I’ve learned that grief is an ever-changing and constant part of life. It’s rare to have a moment when grief isn’t present in one way or another. I’m working on not labeling grief as an evil (and unaddressed) emotion like I did in childhood, but instead I’m learning to recognize and even welcome it. The more we can allow this feeling to be a part of our lives, the more resilience and understanding we can build from within.
Lastly, I’ve learned that the most powerful anecdote to grief is remembering you’ve been here before. That very moment when I’m convinced the grief is actually taking me down this time, that there’s no way I’m going to climb out, I remember that “this too shall pass”… and it always does.
