Written by How in the world can you see any upside to grief? The answer is simple. You don’t. You just must acknowledge that the grief you are encountering exists, and then you must choose to use it or allow it to use you. Choice two is easy because it’s the one that grief wants and is used to accommodating people. The first option is a lot more complicated to deal with. You must understand that whatever grief you address has happened and cannot be changed. Next, you must ask yourself how to move through it. That part is challenging because it is ripe with the memories of the loss, the hardship, and the difficulties associated with the grief. Still, stagnation only allows the grief to stay on top of you, while movement gives you some ability to fight.
Finding the gift in the grief is a choice. We do not want the grief to happen, but now that it has, we have choice that some do not want to make. Some relegate to indecision and do not understand that not deciding is still a decision. As the philosopher and psychologist William James put it, “No decision is, in itself, a decision.” We must understand that moving through our grief is the only way to manage it successfully. You will never be over the grief because the mind constantly reminds you of the difficulty. (Caren, A. (Nov 1, 2018). In her article, Caren indicated that the mind remembers hardships better than good times. She quoted Dr. Laura Carstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University, as saying, “In general, we tend to notice the negative more than the positive.” (Carstensen, L.L. 2018)
It also does not help that the negative is always in our faces and appears to be a daily highlight reel. We are bombarded with negative events through advertisements, news updates, and social media; when those events happen to us, we see them as par for the course. This makes it very difficult to pull anything good from the layers of bad we encounter.
Recently, I created a Facebook post that focused on six individuals who found a way to transform their pain and create something beautiful or do something amazing from it. Here is that list and their accomplishments:
- Buster Douglas Knocked out “Iron” Mike Tyson 23 days before Douglas’ mother died. Douglas went down in the 8th round and recovered to knock out Tyson in the 10th
- Jennifer Hudson won her first Grammy award one year after her mother, brother, and nephew were tragically murdered. She is now in a category of artists with the moniker of being an EGOT recipient.
- Isaiah Thomas of the Boston Celtics had two command performances on the court after his sister died in a car accident. The second was a 53-point homage to her on her birthday.
- Brett Favre put on a stunning quarterback clinic in 2003 during a Monday night game a day after his father suddenly died. It included 399 total yards, four personal touchdowns, and a sweeping 41-7 victory over the Oakland Raiders.
- Eric Clapton wrote “Tears in Heaven” in honor of his four-year-old son, that died from a fall off a ledge of a building in NYC. The song went on to sell muti-platinum.
- Robert Downey, Jr. successfully recovered from a drug and alcohol addiction to embody the character of one of marvels greatest superheroes. The Ironman series and Endgame are some of Marvel’s biggest box-office hits.
Oddly enough, there is a gift hidden within the grief we experience. It is not a gift that anyone wants, but when we become saddled with the tragedy of hardship, the gift can create wonders, but we must use the hurt to our advantage. Grief is the emotion that manifests in our brain’s Amygdala region. The Amygdala sends electronic signals to other brain parts to help direct movement and thought. (AbuHasan et al., 2022)
Theoretically, grief is formed through energy, and according to scientists, energy can never die, but it can be transferred and transformed. (Trosper, 2022)
Because emotions are manifested through energy, we can use it to our advantage instead of allowing it to use us. Mentally, we can transform our thoughts and use them as the power to fuel us to become a better version of ourselves. We can redirect the energy to serve us better, but it takes a shift in our perspective to do so. (University of Washington, 2022) We must decide to use grief as fuel instead of the anchor it wants to be.
Mourning a loss is natural, and there is no proper time limit on the mourning process, but over time, the thoughts that linger from our grief experience become a choice. We can let them envelop us or let our experiences be our springboards. (Doka, 2022)
We have seen how destructive grief can be, but we have also seen how grief can elevate us. Several examples have been listed, but now it comes down to choosing.
Bibliography
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Caren, A. (2018, November 1). Why we often remember the bad better than the good. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/11/01/why-we-often-remember-bad-better-than-good/
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