Our grief is deeply shaped by the nature of our relationship to the person or situation we are grieving. In fact, as hard as it might be to hear, I have observed that one of the most reliable predictors of what our grief journey may look and feel like tends to be reflective of what the relationship looked and felt like. When we love deeply, we grieve deeply. AND love and being in relationship can be complicated, complex, messy, and at times, confusing and brutal (which is some of why grief can feel like that).
One of the ways I help people navigate the complex layers of grief is to encourage them to grieve the entirety of the relationship—the ups, the downs, the wonderful parts, the hard parts, the parts they miss, and even (shhhhhh, most people struggle to hear this), the things that they don’t miss. A healing grief journey includes an honest examination of the relationship, including which parts we want to continue and honor in our ongoing life, and which ones we wish to release. #grief #bereavement #grieftherapy #groundedgrief #parentloss #childloss #siblingloss #motherloss #fatherloss #healingingrief #fatherloss #acutegrief #traumaticgrief #disenfranchisedgrief #miscarriage #suicide #homicide #stillbirth #infertility #nondeathloss #divorce #petloss #complicatedgrief #griefeducation #ambiguousloss #gracetogrieve #selfcompassion
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