No one really tells you how to grieve.

There are plenty of paths chosen: ignore it, become bitter and angry, scream, cry, numb. Plenty of choices here, but what I’ve noticed is grief is one of the most isolating and confusing experiences a person can have.

My dad died last year. A complicated relationship, but a deep loss. By the time my dad died all the other father figures in my life had died too, as well as other complicated family dynamics.

I tried to manage. I used all the little coping skills I know how to do and teach others to do on a daily basis.

Can I tell you a secret?

They didn’t offer much.

I wasn’t in a space where I could challenge my thoughts or reframe my way of thinking and actually get something out of it.

I needed to be with my grief.

I needed to sit with it, process it, FEEL IT. And honestly I couldn’t always do that right after. The pain was too much. If I were to feel it all at once my functioning would have plummeted more than it already had. I took time off as I needed it and tried to face my grief, but in many moments…I just couldn’t.

Now, over six months later, I find myself just beginning to be able to sit with and hold my grief in an open and connected way. And I say that with no judgment toward myself. Grief is complex and often in the world we live in there isn’t enough space or time to process it.

Here I want to offer a beginners guide based on my knowledge as a counselor and my wisdom as a person who has faced a lot of death from a young age.

These are the things I wish I would have known and I hope can help you as you move through one of the most painful experiences a person endures on this earth.

How to sit with your grief

There are many self help books about grief as well as opinions about how to go about being with your grief.

The truth I’ve found is that the grief experience is highly subjective. If I told every single person I sit with who is grieving to do the exact same thing I’ve done, it simply wouldn’t work. Each of us has a complex network of parts of ourselves with different needs. It takes time to find out what it is that offers space for processing and feeling, and what you find soothing.

1.Offer yourself compassion and lots of space.

This is the first step. You are facing something new, incredibly painful, and confusing. When you lose your keys for the 5th time that day let yourself know “I’m going through something really hard it’s natural for me to be forgetful.” If you lash out at someone in your life, recognize you are struggling emotionally. Offer yourself compassion and then apologize and repair. Give yourself time to do coping that you know doesn’t work. I would say do this carefully, but it is ok if you over-socialize for a while to ignore it. It’s ok to zone out with a video game or tv show. It’s ok to want to overwork for a while. Let yourself get messy for as long as you need. Know that this is a natural way of processing intense emotional experiences. The line is drawn at harmful behavior (harming self or others) but if you dip into some of that, you can find compassion for that too. Then reach out for help.

2. Take old ways of coping and adapt them.

You have never been through this before. Even if you have lost people in the past–you have not lost this person, not at this time, not with this set of circumstances. You need to open yourself up to adapting to the current state you find yourself in. If you find yourself “checked out” or “foggy” and normally you zone out in front of the tv when you feel that way, it’s okay to do that for a while. It’s okay to have that be there and to want to not feel something so painful. As time goes on, adapt those zoning out coping strategies a bit. Sit in front of the tv, check out on your phone, watching dumb stuff. On days when it's tolerable, invite a safe person to watch tv with you. Journal while the tv is on. Cry while the tv is on. Give yourself the opportunity to have support in different ways when it feels tolerable to do so.

3. Get support.

If you have a support system, lean on them. Let them in. Let them see what you are going through. If you don’t have a support system, seek one out. Of course I’m going to suggest therapy is a good place to start. Grief groups are also a great way to get connected and be surrounded by grieving people. I found a lot of personal healing mostly due to just being around other grieving people in a grief group setting. It can be soothing to be around others with a shared experience–especially with an experience as isolating as grief is. *This does depend on the group, group leaders, and the groups’ openness to all walks of life. If a group doesn’t feel like a fit for you, don’t be afraid to leave or try to find another group. If it scares you but you want to try one, take a friend.

4. Listen to your body.

Grief tends to live somewhere in your body. Often it sits on peoples shoulders almost like a rock weighing down. It can also be felt in the throat or chest at different capacities. Each person will experience grief differently in the body, but these are some common spots. Start to take notice of it, it tends to ball up somewhere. Once taking notice of it is more comfortable, you can add some gentle self-touch to that part of the body. You can also journal about being aware of the grief sitting in your body. Heating blankets/rice bags, or taking a warm bath in those painful grief body areas can feel gently attentive to these experiences of somatic grief. You can begin to connect to where your body is holding your experience and offer compassion to what it is your body is going through while grieving.

5. Allow yourself to feel your grief when it is tolerable to do so.

Allow yourself to feel your grief when it is tolerable to do so. People often find relief after allowing themselves to really feel the impact of their grief. However it is painful, and processing that kind of pain can take time. Give yourself compassion if you need more space before you are ready to feel it. However, I will say don’t bottle this up forever. They say grief changes people, and that’s because it does. Ignoring it is possible, but humans can avoid their grief only for so long before it starts to weave its way into your life in a way that can cut you off from connection and harm yourself and others. If you’re reading this and you’re processing a loss from 15, 20, 30 years ago, there is still room for you to connect with that grief and experience it in a way that works for you. Once you have started to feel and notice it, offer yourself something that soothes you: a conversation with a friend, your favorite food, a warm cup of tea, etc. anything that is going to offer you a sense of comfort.

6. When you are ready, begin bringing the person you have lost into your life again, in any way you choose to connect with them.

When you are ready, begin bringing the person you have lost into your life again, in any way you choose to connect with them. That can be through talking to them out loud, writing letters then burning them, carrying around a piece of their clothing or jewelry, singing their favorite song, or whatever it is that helps you connect to your loved one. If you have a hard time with implementing these ideas, that is okay too. Do this however you need to and at your own pace. But if you can find a ritual to connect with your lost one, you will find yourself soothed in a new way as you move through the grief process.

Entering Into the World While Grieving

This can feel like one of the largest feats in the world to some, and to others it can offer relief and an escape from the constant pain. Both of these are okay to experience, and many of us (including me) can find ourselves in both groups at different phases of the grief process. It usually takes time to enter into the world in a way that works for you. Notice how you feel about leaving your home, or going back to work. Allow yourself to be relieved, angry, or sad.

Below I’ve listed a few things to help you notice how it feels to enter back out in the world after it feels like your world imploded.

The weather outside: is it a sunny day or a gray, foggy day? In a grief group I was in, one of the things the program discussed was gauging what kind of day it is by the emotional weather. When you look out your emotional window is it so foggy you can’t see very well? If that’s the case, perhaps leaving the house may not be an option that day. Is it cloudy with some fog, maybe that means you can go to the grocery store or chat with a friend. It offers awareness for how you need compassion each day to find your way through without forcing yourself toward a state of being emotionally flooded.
You are allowed to talk about your loved one. You are allowed to feel the pain of your loss. No matter your beliefs about after death, the result of what we are left with is painful and confusing. It feels unnatural because we don’t talk about death. It’s often a taboo subject. You will find that some people don’t have the capacity to hold where you are at. You are not responsible for other people’s discomfort with your grief responses. You are responsible for if you have done harm or overstepped boundaries with another person, but that is where the responsibility ends.
Take care of your own needs. If you leave the house to go to a social event and you are only there for 10 minutes before you need to leave, that is okay. If you thought you were more ready to be social than you actually were and didn’t realize it until you arrived at the event, that is okay, too. If you get there and can’t go in, let the person know and go home. This is a time to be very kind to yourself. If someone has a problem with it, that's not an issue you need to carry.
Getting flooded. This one will happen and you won’t expect it. You could be having a conversation with someone and they start talking about the buttons on their jacket, next thing you know you’re taken back to when your loved one tried on a jacket in a store that looked funny on them. All of a sudden you’re crying. The person across from you is like “what just happened” and you don’t know what to do. You are allowed to have those kinds of moments. You are allowed to get overwhelmed by the loss you feel. Loss cannot be put into a box. It will show up in ways that are unexpected and with people you aren’t comfortable grieving in front of. Find ways to navigate this with your own boundaries in mind. You can excuse yourself to the bathroom, you can just walk away, or you can tell your story. You are not obligated to tell others what is going on, but you can if you are with safe people.
Experiencing happiness and laughter amidst grieving is okay. In fact, somatically speaking, laughter can bring bodily relief in similar ways that crying does. However, many people in grief find laughing or feeling happy brings up feelings of guilt. “How can I be happy when someone I love is not here.” You are and always will be a person capable of a vast array of emotions, happiness and joy are amongst those. If guilt follows, go down that path. What is it that feels wrong about laughter and joy? Let yourself move through the guilt you experience with an understanding that the guilt is false. I know that sounds harsh, but you are allowed to continue to have human experience. However, you may need to grieve the fact that you are having human experiences without your loved one there, and that can feel awful.
Other people's commentary about how you are grieving is not your responsibility to justify to them or to yourself. People commonly say some very inappropriate comments or suggestions to grieving people. I think this is likely because we as a society are cut off from grief as an experience until we face it ourselves.

Some common ones are:

“Hasn’t it been like (x amount of time) aren’t you over this by now”

“You’re handling this in such a healthy way and moving on so well”

“I know exactly how you feel”

“You should do _____ to feel better”

Or sometimes the one that can feel the worst is silence, or other people’s avoidance of your presence. It can feel like another loss on top of your own.

Mind you, many of us have made our own social faux pas related to grief until we have faced it ourselves. If you are reading this and you see yourself in these unhelpful comments, be open to your grieving loved ones and hear the way it impacts them and adjust. However, if you find yourself on the receiving end, these words and sentiments can be enraging and hurtful. You get to interact with these comments how you want to. Silence and walking away is an option or you may find yourself wanting to tell the person off. You are allowed to name out loud that you don’t like the way your grief is being treated or the way that you are being treated as a whole person. Again, this decision is up to you depending on your personality and the context of your circumstances.

Comment on Family Dynamics

A loss is highly individual and highly communal at the same time. After a loss, family dynamics often change significantly. That in itself presents more emotional issues to process, and often the family dynamics take up more space for a while than the your own grief process does. Here I specifically talked about processing your own personal grief, but I want to mention the importance of processing family dynamics as they change and shift after loss. This is where individual therapy can also be very helpful in navigating your own needs amidst the changes happening in your family system.

Final Thoughts

Some people have very little experience with grief until they are older. Others of us have had it threaded in our lives from a young age. No matter how grief has weaved its way into your life, the fact remains that this is a lesson learned through wisdom rather than knowledge. It takes time to lean into the process after it’s happened.

“The biggest thing I can leave you with is that this process is yours, and yours alone. ”

You get to go through this in whatever way works for you. What you have been through is devastating, and nothing I can say will take that away. But, I do hope this can offer you a place to start, and maybe some space for self compassion and kindness. And I can offer some reassurance that it does evolve over time. The way you grieve and carry your grief will change in a way that can offer you connectedness with your loved one, yourself, and other people in new deep and meaningful ways. I’ve seen it, both in myself and others.

So when you are at the bottom of that yawning grief pit and feel that your future will only hold endless pain, allow yourself to hold that despair and honor it, while knowing it won’t be like that forever.

You can find moments of happiness, groundedness, and peace again.

It will just be different.

No matter what you are facing, may you gently embrace yourself and your grief experience with love.

Sincerely,

Alison

Lessons in Grief: A Therapist's Honest Account of Loss and Healing