Written by Rewarding and easy do not go hand and hand, but it puts the griever in an excellent position to find themselves. Life is not simple, and your grief brings that to the forefront of your mind. You can no longer pretend, procrastinate, be like others, or be like your former self because you have been forever changed by whatever has happened. You may desire to return to your past familiars, which is all right. Still, you soon realize you cannot stay there because what you have or are dealing with does not allow you the same freedoms, luxuries, or experiences you had before the grief-related incident occurred. You have been forced to evolve. Instead of looking to rebuild your house with the same worn-out tools you used before your grief experience, you now own a new set in the way of change. Those experiences can allow you to grow through your grief. A certified counselor named Lois Tonkin created a model based on a similar thought. The model is called “The Tonkin’s Model of Grief.” Tonkin states in an article, “In this way, they (grievers) continue the process of integrating the loss with their lives and moving forwards. (Tonkin, 1996)
What stinks even more is that the change you have been forced to deal with is uncomfortable. At times, you feel like you are being victimized twice. Therefore, you must change your thinking from victimhood to one of understanding. it is an opportunity to be reborn. You can use the experiences to recraft your narrative, and now the circumstance that has you in grief prepares you for your next adventure. The discomfort is happening for a few reasons:
- The main reason is the loss itself. A feeling that is extremely powerful and valid. It has taken away something you hold dear, which is extremely painful.
- The forced change is uncomfortable for humans because it makes us move outside of our comfort zones.
- A new reality. Knowing that certain things must be learned or relearned to continue moving forward and facing that fact is confusing, unnerving, and sometimes scary.
- Feelings of lack of control. You feel like the experience you deal with is driving your life, and you are simply an observant passenger who cannot control the vehicle’s movements.
All these beliefs are valid, and you are right that it has totally disrupted your way of life, but because your patterns of familiarity have been broken, that does not mean you have been. There is a time to mourn over your circumstance, and your mourning period is justifiable. All loss calls for a period of mourning.
We must understand that after a time (which is strictly up to the griever) in the mourning period, continuing to grieve the experience or feelings related to loss becomes a choice. I must be clear; I am not saying that mourning the grief is not what should be done; what I am saying is that if you have been mourning over a situation you cannot change, then after a while, you must ask yourself if the choice to stay anchored to pain that I cannot do anything about helpful? Is it serving me, or will my energy be better used moving to find a better version of myself?
Some mourners do not want to move forward because they fear their lack of grieving is doing a disservice to their deceased or to the condition they have become used to. People who have suffered a loss must not confuse themself by aquatinting the pain of the grief with dishonoring the reason for the grief. For example, if your grief is due to losing a loved one, do you believe they would want you feeling incapacitated, sick, or dead inside because of them? The truth is certainly not. You must believe they would have wanted better for you, so have that same thought for yourself. Feeling that way achieves three goals:
- You reduce grief’s powerful grip because you no longer choose to stay a victim.
- You honor the love of the lost person because you acknowledge that, although missing you hurts. You will show how you have elevated and thank them for the fuel for the flight. Since you can’t have them back, what you can do is show them how the loss has given you a new strength.
- You give grief the middle finger. As I mentioned, grief normally intensifies the pain associated with loss. It has nothing to fight you with when you take that tool away. Seeing grief in that inferior position allows you to show it no mercy, and just like it has been giving you the middle finger for the time of your grief, you can throw it up at it. Consequently, it feels great knowing that you are shrinking your grief.
An article on Mental Health in Libero Magazine summarizes this point well. The author states, “Your grief should not stop you from living the life you want for yourself.” (Bair, Arbushites, 2015) Remember that no longer grieving actively over the loss does not mean you forget the person, place, or thing you have been grieving. It just means that you have accepted the experience and realized that you could not change it but have chosen to use it as a catalyst for progress. You do not deserve to believe what your grief is telling you. It is not mandatory to live in your misery.
Bibliography
Lois Tonkin TTC, Cert Counselling (NZ) (1996) Growing around grief—another way of looking at grief and recovery, Bereavement Care, 15:1, 10, DOI: 10.1080/02682629608657376
(Bair) Arbushites, A. (2015, August 13). The Intricacies of Large-Scale Grief. Libero Magazine. https://liberomagazine.com/mentalhealth/intricacies-large-scale-grief/