Throughout life we are bound to grieve many things but often may not realize when we are grieving. I am not referring to the grief felt after the death of a loved one. This post is not meant to equate these losses to the experience of the death of a loved one. This post is not meant to diminish that kind of grief. For this post, I am talking about a kind of grief that occurs when life doesn't go the way we expected or hoped. We term this as the loss of your assumptive world.
I was reminded of this when reading this honest post about a woman’s grief for being over 35 and childless by what she terms “circumstantial infertility”. She wants to have a child with a partner she deeply loves, but hasn’t found that partner just yet. This is just one type of grief - many which can center around fertility or pregnancy.
Page Cvelich and I recently hosted discussion groups for parents of 20-somethings. We encouraged parents to acknowledge any grief they may be feeling if their child isn't living the life that the parents had hoped for. It's hard to accept a child for who they are when you may be stuck on what you wished they would be.
Let's look at some other kinds of grief:
There is grief when you and a friend have a falling out.
There is grief when you go through divorce.
There is grief when you develop a chronic illness or suffer a physical ailment.
You get the idea and the list could go on. I understand this may seem a disheartening topic for a blogpost, but I believe this needs to be given a voice. I am writing to normalize the need to grieve when you incur any of these kinds of losses. Acceptance can be easily preached, but it's important to remember that grief may come first.
There is the emotion of grief and then there is the act of grieving. Grieving means acknowledging the feeling, validating it, and allowing ourselves to experience it. Usually this is repeated many, many times. And one must take care of themselves throughout the process. Sometimes grief manifests itself in physical ways. We may feel tired, irritable, numb, or have trouble sleeping. We may find ourselves staying extra busy or “checking-out” via TV or social media. If someone has incurred a loss and later notices their body or mind feeling “off” or different – they may be feeling grief (of course, physical examination by a physician is always warranted with any significant change).
What I often see as a barrier to the grieving process is the feeling of guilt. I often say, “You can accept something and not be happy that it happened”. You can accept the reality of a situation without indicting yourself as the one who made it happen or wished it upon yourself. And when you start to “move on”, living in a world that contradicts your assumptive reality, you are not betraying that assumptive reality. You are instead making the best of the cards you were dealt. You are being creative, resourceful, and strong. It isn’t always going to feel good. It may be very hard. But this is you actively living in this new reality. And that can only genuinely happen when you have also allowed yourself to grieve whatever occurred (or didn’t occur).
Operating in the present is a part of the grieving process and in fact grief can hit hard when you are doing so. For example, a person goes on their first date after a major break-up and later experiences feelings of grief. As hard as it is - these two go hand in hand. Grieving is essential to being able to genuinely operate in the present and operating in the present is a part of the grieving process.
To summarize: your loss and your grief are real and deserve to be recognized. If you are experiencing grief and would like additional support, please contact me or anyone else in the Work/Life Department for information on additional resources.
