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What stories do you have when youve gone through the grieving process. This is what it is
- 5 stages: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance
What stories do you have when youve gone through the grieving process. This is what it is
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Hi there, friend:) Well I have something to share on this topic. Might want to sit down lol. So, as you may know, I'm a recovered alcoholic. Some say this is something that is dangerous to say. I say it because I know that I will never drink again. And this share is why I know it. In 2002 my wife (of 9 years) and I bought a little house together. Two kids 8 and 3. She hadn't been working since we were married so she could be with the kids. Amazing mom! Kind and caring. Me, carpenter, was working a lot starting my own business and paying the bills. We began to drift in communication and almost two years later one of her friends approached me in a very provocative way to tell me that she'd been having an affair for some time. I was devastated of course. Felt like the ground had been pulled out and I was in free fall. for a few weeks I didn't have the energy to function. I went through grief and feelings of loss that I didn't know were possible. You don't go through the stages in order all the time. And I certainly didn't. Many of them would arrive at random moment for years. Started with anger, and I'm not a person who has that. After confirming with her, took a while to get partial truths, I asked her to leave until we could figure out what we were going to do. After two days at her best friends she asked to come back as it really wasn't good for her or the kids to not have her home. Reasonable. So went into bargaining. I'll work on things if.....We cobbled together some kind of truce but I was sinking into a depression and started drinking after work almost everyday. Mastered avoidance with alcohol as an enabler for about 7 years. Had to sell the house because I wasn't pushing on my own business anymore and became an essential employee of a building company. Poured my soul into my craft but was struggling in myself. She was depressed also, and we were both suffering fromPTSD. The little grace was that as distant as we were with communicating our true feeling (because we didn't know how to face them ourselves) we were and have been since, family for each other. More like brother and sister than a married couple in many ways. She gained some weight, neither of us had much self esteem or confidence at this point. I was in a rut and stuck. We both were. So something happened. I was at work on Monday morning up on a high staging when an inexperience helper unbolted the system and I fell with all the tools and metal platform. Broken bones and a bunch of other things. Couldn't even walk for a month. And that's when my life changed. Lying on the couch, in pain, feeling broken in every way. That's when I knew that I couldn't drink ever again if I was to be able to pull myself together. Had some surgeries, did PT for a year, was compensated for wages by workers comp fo 18 months. And I think I used the time well. Started walking everyday. A little more each time until I was doing steep hills and really getting in shape. And started reading about sobriety, emotions, Buddism and meditation. Yoga classes. But I was still not whole and then on a walk I realized that I hadn't healed from the affair. So I ordered a great book on how to work through it. And finally; acceptance. Which I now know I couldn't realize until I learned to love myself. My wife and I decided to take some time apart. through the first months of my sobriety I had talked with her about my need to work on myself and that I needed space for that. She got a job and we lived like roommates for a few years. Then we decided to go to India together to see what we could see. Went for over a month and I loved it because I was opening up to life but it had the opposite effect on her and she decided that she needed to isolate for her own well being. So she moved to Maui for a year and I kept learning to care for myself on all levels. Now she lives across the river from me in a lovely historic town in an apartment that I really made beautiful for her. We've let go of so much of our old selves that we can really talk and understand on another like we never could when we were married. We love and appreciate and respect. We are both continuing to work on ourselves. I'm working for myself again and because of my exercise and lifestyle I'm stronger than Ive ever been. I became a volunteer EMT for my community and have become one of the key responders with hundreds of emergency calls. The clients I am attracting are wonderful people who I socialize with as friends. And my oldest and dearest friend who I lost touch with while I was suffering have re connected and we get together for hiking adventures. Healing takes time, but even more it takes honesty. I have to remind myself to keep looking inward. Soul search. Listen in quiet to my true self. Because sometimes I still feel lost. And then I realize that it's just my habit mind not quite catching up to this present moment. I continue to learn to lay down my shame and feelings of less than. I don't need them in my life anymore. These things are behaviors of loops not THIS NOW. So thanks for the inspiration to express some of this. Reminders are good that healing is slow and sometimes you don't see it until you take a moment to step back and look at the bigger picture. All the best, Love Jason
There are other types of grieving and those stages don't go in order. Anger might be first, acceptance can come and go. We can get stuck in our grief.
One can feel anticipatory grief with a loved one dying slowly of Alzheimers, or cancer, for example. People often feel guilty to start to anticipate the grief of their loved one dying while they are still alive. But this is normal to feel.
Then there is ambiguous loss. Ambiguous loss is when the loss is unclear and undefined and often lingers indefinitely. There is a lack of resolution. Might be situations with no certainty that this person will come back, or no return to the way they used to be. No cultural norms or rituals to support us, like a funeral, or wearing black. The pandemic was a time of ambiguous loss and even though it is over now, we still remember the stress and anxiety of that time. Estrangements, lost pets, MIA in wars, kidnapped people, divorce.
Disenfranchised grief – Grief that is not recognized by others or by society, so we feel alone, lonely, unsure, or unsupported. Death of a pet, estrangements, miscarriages, abortions, also maybe divorce.
Frozen grief – Grief that gets stuck or doesn’t move forward due to the physical or psychological disappearance of the person and when mourning becomes chronic leading to depression or anger issues. There may be ongoing trauma because there is no answer.
Lastly, complicated grief, in which painful emotions of loss don’t improve with time and are so severe that we have trouble recovering and resuming our own life.
Once a year, I do a presentation on ambiguous loss to a support group I facilitate. These people have family conflict and estrangements and it is eating their hearts out.
There is a myth of closure in our culture. There is no closure and there is no defined definition of the word closure and what it means with grief. We humans have memories and emotions and we never get to the point of closure and no longer feeling or remembering. We can move forward in our lives. Knowing that we can't shut a door in our mind and never think of our loved one is futile and keeps us in grief longer that is good for us. We struggle to find closure thinking this is healthy but it is a myth and not healthy. To accept what is and how it is is healthier and allows us to move forward in our lives.
The theory and coping skills taught in Radical Acceptance are very helpful with grief or any other life problems that we have no control over and can't change. Even health or mental health problems or dealing with a loved one with problems.
That is my take on grief from the material I teach in this support group and mostly taken from the work of Dr Pauline Boss and her book, "The Myth of Closure." Good coping skills in that book even though it is written about the pandemic. The pandemic has created a lot of ambiguous loss among people. We also do Radical Acceptance sometimes and people find these teachings and coping skills are helpful to their healing.
Hasty, I love what you say about the myth of closure! So true!
Thank you for writing all of this, I've been dealing with lots of change. I've been through so much of my life that I am tired. Not physically tired but emotionally drained. But I am learning ways to let people back into my life. At least I've had sometime to process everything by taking time out to think, now I need to keep celebrating life
Yes, it is good you have had time to process things that have happened or are going on in your life. Many of us take time to process everything. I know my spouse needs about 3 days before he can think of what he wants to say when he is in a his family conflict situation. I can often respond immediately but it may take a week to get the stress out. We are simply humans processing our feelings or our stress or our grief.
This is a year of people having a lot of draining type of issues according to the astrologers. I am always a skeptic but I listen and learn and then watch and see. The political crazy season has now started and many people feel some way about what is going on in the USA. It feels weird to me to hear others say they feel drained and are struggling to celebrate life this year, or right now because this is me, too. Have had an injury and now it is something worse but I finally had my appointment with the second specialist. Who said he lives in the neighborhood south of mine. Such a nice man, he was okay sharing where he lived (he was looking to see where I lived to figure out what facility to send me to for imaging and he said it to me). So while I am struggling, I did feel this was a doctor I could trust and could keep on celebrating life and trying to find a small joy every day. Hugs to you!