GRIEF AWARENESS WEEK
In honour of International Grief Awareness Week, I want to share my experience of all the many different ways I have experienced grief.
All grief is valid
While losing someone to death is a most awful experience and the grief can last a lifetime, it is not the sole source of grief that we experience throughout our lives. And it is important to acknowledge that all grief is valid and difficult to navigate.
In grief psychology there is something called Ring Theory. It is the principle that the grieving person is at the centre surrounded by rings of people – the closer you are to the grieving person, the closer the ring you are in. And when it comes to providing support you move one ring closer. And when it comes to seeking support for yourself you move one ring further away. I think the link I included explains it better….
In my personal experience of grief, the more your daily life is impacted by the loss, the harder the grief hits. I have grieved the death of people who I love very much less than I have grieved less obvious events and people. Because my daily life and future dreams were less shattered.
Grief comes in many forms
According to ChatGPT these are some of the ways people experience grief:
- Death of a loved one or even a public figure
- Loss of health through chronic illness, injury, mental health challenges, loss of pregnancy or miscarriage
- Relationships ending through divorce or separation, estrangement, or the ending of a friendship
- Loss of identity through retirement, career changes, empty nest, cultural or religious changes
- Financial impacts of job loss, bankruptcy or unmet career goals
- Personal or lifestyle changes through the loss of a home, displacement, or the loss of dreams and future plans
- Loss of security through shattered trust, infidelity, trauma, abuse or losing a sense of control
- Loss of belonging through displacement, migration, loss of community or social support
- Loss of opportunities through unfulfilled potential, loss of dreams and aspirations
- Loss of independence through ageing or taking on a caregiver role
- Loss of the future through terminal illness or a fear of ageing
There are probably more grief experiences that artificial intelligence hasn’t quite got a grip on yet, but it is still a comprehensive list. And I personally identify with quite a number of them. And it is incredibly painful.
First, let me honour all the beautiful people I have loved but are no longer with us
My mother. My father. My brother. My sister. My four grandparents. My parents-in-law. My stepfather. My friends Dianne and Linda. All of them close to my inner circles.
But then there are also the deaths of more distant relatives, friends of friends and work colleagues who I was not so close to, but I still grieved not only the loss of their lives, but the grief their loved ones were going through. We all experience these losses. Nobody gets through life without witnessing death. It is part of the circle of life. A reality we must all face.
I have not experienced the unspeakable death of a partner or a child. I can only begin to imagine the shock and unimaginable heights of that kind of loss. Even just witnessing people going through those losses is unspeakably awful.
Estrangement is a walking nightmare
The worst grief I have ever experienced is estrangement. And I’m going through it for the second time now. It is the worst kind of grief I have personally experienced because not only did it take away my everyday life with my closest confidante, but it took away all my future dreams. But the nightmarish part is the hope you always hold onto with estrangement. And perhaps hope is a strange thing to have in a nightmare, but what it brings is no sense of closure. There is no ending. The sense of absolutely shattered trust is overwhelming. To one moment believe that everything is beautiful and then being instantly ghosted without explanation is a living hell.
While the death of my parents and siblings was truly awful, given the way three of them died long, slow painful deaths, there was a sense of relief along with mourning when they were gone. There was also a sense of them finally being at peace. And a hope for me that perhaps they’re all somewhere together now. Having little family dinners and laughing and being peaceful. I hope they watch over me. I feel at peace with their deaths now.
There is no sense of relief with estrangement. It just feels horrific. Day and night. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
Relationship breakdowns are heartbreaking
I am currently going through a separation but the grief of the loss of that relationship began long ago and the separation really became the easy part. The grief slowly became a part of my life as the disintegration of something we thought would last forever began. It was a slow shattering. No less painful despite the slower pace. The grief sat with me day and night for years. There are so many future plans wrapped up in a marriage. You expect to grow old together. To always have someone by your side. To have financial security. It is knowing you always have a safe place to fall.
All those things are lost when a marriage ends. I am fortunate that our separation is very amicable and while so much has changed, for the time being, so much remains the same. It is a difficult loss, but for now, my every day has not changed. And the every day is what hits home the hardest.
I have also lost friendships. Some of them abruptly and some of them slowly wearing away over time. I think friendships are very underrated, highly important relationships. They are at the core of our social circles and humans are, in their very essence, social beings. We don’t need a big social circle. But we do need a circle. When someone disappears from that circle big things can change. It becomes a sense of feeling isolated and alone.
Loss of identity is crushing
I have lost so much identity in the past eight years. I was a musician and a teacher to the very core of my being. Now I feel enormously anxious at the bare thought of it. The loss of that identity impacted my everyday life and all my future income and dreams and most of my social circle. I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I once had a panic attack in a music therapy session when the percussion instruments brought back so many memories. It took six years for me to find any sense of a new purpose. Which I still struggle with but I’m feeling more settled these days.
The worst loss of identity however, was as a mother. I will always be a mother of course. But I identified so strongly with being a mum to little people and when I finally accomplished my desire to raise lovely young adults, all of a sudden I had no little people to mother. They didn’t need me anymore. We had to renegotiate our relationships as fellow adults. And they are beautiful relationships but they’re not the same. I miss with all my heart, the joys of raising little people. They were the happiest years of my life. And they are forever gone.
Mental health is it’s own type of grief
I have been blessed with excellent physical health. And all my fingers and toes remain crossed in the hope it remains that way. But I have some excellent longevity family genes which will stand me in good stead.
My mental health has not been so sturdy. I started falling apart in 2015 and shattered completely in 2020. That shattering cost me friendships, love, security and identity. Once you have a mental illness diagnosis everyone looks at you differently. Even when you’re well. If I express a concern about something it’s often put down to me having Bipolar II Disorder, or high anxiety. Which denies the reality I’m experiencing. Everyone has concerns and worries and not all of them are just manifestations of mental health. In fact most of them are not. I grieve the days when I was just considered a normal person with life’s ups and downs. Now I’m a person with labels.
The stigma of mental illness is very real. If I had become physically unwell the fallout would not have been as significant as psychological illness. People find themselves going through compassion fatigue much more quickly with mental illness. Which leaves us feeling alone. And that is it’s own type of grief.
I have lost myself in so many ways
Losing myself is perhaps the hardest grief of all. And that has happened through all the different experiences I’ve talked about. I am not the person I was before. I don’t feel like a daughter or mother anymore. I am not even the person I would have been if I had grown up in a house with demonstrable love. Childhood emotional neglect is a form of grief that lasts a lifetime. It shattered my sense of self-worth. Estrangement, separation and infidelity shattered all my trust and made me feel unlovable and unworthy. The loss of a career and marriage destroyed all my pictures of the future and any sense of financial security. A decade ago, I couldn’t wait to travel somewhere. Now I can’t bear the thought of travelling anywhere.
Grief has made my world smaller and smaller. Every little shard of grief that enters my heart stays there. Forever. The wounds close around the shards but they’re always there. And sometimes they feel sharp but as time passes they soften. My current shards are enormous and the wounds are still gaping. They will close and heal over time. But grief leaves scars on the heart that change it forever. We adapt, but we are changed. It is deeply personal, individual and timeless. That is the journey of grief.
