The Art of Conscious Grieving by Lily Dawn Robertson
overwhelm. Like Alpine weather, we vary from crisp and blue one moment to angry and frozen the next. We can feel fixed within a frame we call grief, so much so that our normal perception of reality disappears. Bereavement is disorienting and life no longer certain. Yet a major loss or tragedy can be an awakening into a new reality. Everything can be so incredibily clear, our senses so supercharged, that we become aware that we are standing outside of our normal frame. Grieving is an opportunity for change, a reframing of life that can lead us to gather our courage and step onto a new path. I know from experience, for grief became a doorway for me—and it can for you, too.
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Last year, at age 59, I suffered the loss of my husband from an unexpected illness. In the weeks and months following his death, my world no longer made sense. I lived in a surreal space, reeling with disbelief. And I was shocked to learn that I had no connection to the process of death and that I really did not know how to grieve in a way that felt acceptable to those around me. It was an understatement to say I was faltering, and it was also true that I resided in some kind of in-between transitional place, where by necessity my old beliefs were shifting but new beliefs had not fully formed.
THE DEATH AND DYING MOVEMENT
The name Elizabeth Kubler Ross is synonymous with the death and dying movement. In her book On Death and Dying (1969), she outlined the five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. However, she was actually writing about facing one’s own impending death, not grieving the death of a loved one. Unfortunately, the public and counsellors found these stages irresistibly neat and easy to work with. Today, these stages are widely taught and information about them is distributed to families at hospice centres around the world. But what if you don’t fit into this neat formula? During my grieving process I felt people were inflexible in their expectations of what grief should look like, fixated as they seemed to be on Kubler Ross’s stages and phases of grieving. I felt those around me were more comfortable when I appeared to fit into one of these five phases. For example, I felt no need to “tell my story” or “get my feelings out.” The reaction to my silence was generally well-meaning, but often was tempered by murmurs of “She’s in denial.” I felt a lack of tolerance for my own process and that people were judging my personal grieving style as unhealthy. But was it?
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ereavement, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, means left alone by death. The words are harsh, dark and final. After a major loss in life, we feel not only sadness but sometimes also a sense of
A study conducted in the aftermath of 9/11 and published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (2008) revealed that people who did not express their initial grief reactions showed fewer signs of distress in the future, whereas those who did express their grief reactions had a harder time adjusting. Interestingly, this finding is contrary to popular belief and possibly difficult to accept.
George Bonanno, clinical psychologist and author of The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After a Loss, found that we have a built-in resilience to move through grief without goals and stages. His research showed that many of the five stages are actually myths and that, furthermore, people who used “repressive coping” (focusing away from negative emotions) actually felt less depression and anxiety than those who expressed their negative emotions freely. Bonanno questions why we are considered a hero if we are resilient in the face of a traumatic event, but we are considered cold if we are resilient after a death.
COMPLICATED GRIEF
There is a medical term called “complicated grief,” which refers to an “abnormal” grief response. It covers a range of responses that fall outside what is considered to be the norm: the complete absence of grief, the inability to experience grief or mourning, an especially prolonged grief response, or an unusually intense grief reaction. Science has studied it and found in one study that people experiencing complicated grief showed, surprisingly enough, a significant activation of the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain most commonly associated with reward. The process appears to be that thinking about the deceased loved one activates these neurons, kicking in a temporarily pleasurable feeling that can almost be addiction- like and so extending the healing process. Professional help may be warranted for these individuals. But, really, except in cases where a person is incapacitated, who is say what is healthy or unhealthy, normal or abnormal when it comes to dealing with the death of a loved one?
GRIEVING—AN INSIDE JOB
To me, grieving is an inside job. Sure, most of us go through a fairly identifiable process. We feel alone and isolated even when surrounded by others. We feel our life has become untethered. We can’t get our heads around our loss. Our hearts feel broken. But we can also grow and learn from our loss. Healing comes not from the head but from the heart, and experiencing the heart-wrenching loss of a loved one may open us to finding ourselves anew. It may actually get us in touch with our hearts
CHOICE POINT MAGAZINE 23
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