by Rich Nilsen
“Grief only comes in one size, extra large.” — Dennis Manning
If grief can be summed up in a nutshell, it is how we feel now that an important person is no longer in our life. In essence, we hurt and feel sorry for ourselves. Our focus is usually on what WE lost. Grief, of course, is a normal reaction to the loss of someone or something. Each of us will handle these feelings in our own way and in our own time. There is no blueprint to the process and no timetable to how long you will hurt.
Author J. William Worden describes four facets of mourning:
1 – Accepting the reality of the loss
2 – Experiencing the pain of grief
3 – Adjusting to an environment without the lost loved one
4 – Reinvesting emotional energy in life
Having been through the complete grief process, I can relate to each of these “steps.” Accepting the loss almost immediately helped me move on with my mourning quicker, although it didn’t make anything easier.
I cannot help you acknowledge the reality of your loss. Only you can do that, and hopefully you are well past that stage by the time you receive this book.
Sometimes, intense feelings of grief will catch us by surprise. It may startle you when you fall “into the pits” several months after the tragedy. It is at this time that many people will be expecting you to be over your loss. Don’t believe them. It is only normal for this to happen. Just remember your grief is unique. No one else is just like you. No one else had the same relationship with the person who died.
Understand that a main purpose of grief is to help you reach the point in your life when you can remember without the pain.
What I present later in this guide are several steps to help you get through the grieving process in a positive way.
- This article – Understanding Grief – is an excerpt from The Road to Recovery – check it out here
- copyright GriefHelp.org and All Star Press LLC
Eight months after John died, Neustadter started sending emails to his old Yahoo address, because “communicating with John was truly the only thing I wanted to do at that time,” she said. It gave her a way to keep the conversation alive.
