“It’s not like anyone died, so it’s not like we actually get to grieve that stuff, right?”

and

“But there’s all this good stuff going on in my life, too, so I can’t be sad about that.”

Comments like these, in my opinion as a psychotherapist, unintentionally and unfortunately illustrate how misunderstood grief actually is and how dismissive many of us can be about our own feelings. Comments like these showcase how many of us essentially de-legitimize the grief we may be experiencing around events in our lives.

And that’s sad and hard. Because grief is painful and challenging enough as it is. When we tell ourselves, “No, I don’t get to grieve this, this doesn’t count, I shouldn’t feel this way”, we make the experience so, so much harder for our tender, vulnerable selves.

Now let’s face it: Grief is a huge, complex, intensely personal, unusually painful and triggering topic – one short online article from me can hardly do the topic justice and I want to admit that fully.

However, my hope is that in today’s post I can at least challenge some common myths about grief, validate what it is you may personally be going through, and provide some further resources if you need additional assistance navigating the wild, brambled, thorny journey of grief.

So if you in any way tend to dismiss, invalidate, or ignore your own grief, today’s blog post is meant for you.

Grief: How can we possibly find words for it?

Grief. What a powerful, evocative word. And yet what words exactly can describe such an intense experience?

Grief, according to Merriam Webster, is explained as:

: deep sadness caused especially by someone’s death

: a cause of deep sadness

: trouble or annoyance

 

Grief, according to the poet Mary Oliver in her poem, A Pretty Song, feels like this:

From the complications of loving you

I think there is no end or return.

No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?

This isn’t a playground, this is

earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence

to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods

that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.

And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song,

And I say to my heart: rave on.

(I personally prefer Mary Oliver’s interpretation.)

Look, chances are we all intellectually know that grief is an emotional reaction to loss in our lives, and we all likely have heard about the five stages of grief, pioneered by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD in her groundbreaking work on death and dying: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. That’s grief, right?