A Relationship With Grief

Source: Katie Willard Virant

To live with chronic illness is to live with loss: loss of bodily functions, loss of trust in one’s body, loss of relationships, loss of experiences, loss of a hoped-for future, and loss of the pre-illness self. I want you to read that sentence again and really take it in. To live with chronic illness is to live with loss. Can you acknowledge this, not just at an intellectual level, but at a felt-experience level? Your illness means that loss is your constant companion. “Gee, thanks,” you might be saying. “Good talk.” But hear me out — I’m making the case that tending to our relationship with loss can be empowering and liberating, and that we are more fully human if we relate to our grief instead of push it away, minimize, or demonize it.

Grief is hard

Our culture is afraid of grief. We see vulnerability as weakness and weakness as unworthiness. When we see grief coming, we tend to try to control it. Culturally, we put firm boundaries around grief: We make judgments on what is worthy of being grieved, who is allowed to grieve, the ways grief is expressed, and the length of time grief should take. “Get over it!” should be our national refrain.

Fear of grief is, of course, understandable. Grief is so painful that our instinctive response is to want to run away from it. We do this in many ways. We may pull back from joy in order to lessen the blow of loss. We may judge our grief, believing that “normal people don’t feel grief so intensely and/or for such a long time.” This self-judgment leads to shame, which leads to isolation. What if we could reframe this?

Grief is normal

Loss is part of every human’s experience. If you think about it, loss is omnipresent. As I write this, I’m looking out my office window at the trees losing their leaves. I’ve just aged as I wrote this sentence. You just aged as you read it.

Then there are the losses that are not normative — the losses like illness that pull us out of our usual rhythms, sometimes irrevocably. What have you lost as a result of your illness? If you think it would be helpful, make a written list. I’m guessing that you’re feeling sad as you contemplate these losses. I’m also guessing that you want to stop feeling sad. Try instead to make a space inside for the sadness. This grief space should be a flexible space — it can contract and grow as grief ebbs and flows. It may be useful to have a mental image of a space inside of you as your “grief space,” the place in your body that holds grief.

Notice what is happening in your grief space right now. Are you allowing the grief to fill the space in the way that it wants to? Or are you attempting to control it? Notice if you are trying to regulate your grief by telling yourself how you should and shouldn’t feel. “That was a long time ago.” “I should be over this.” “That’s a minor thing to get upset about.” Gently push these judgments aside and let your grief find a home in your grief space in whatever way it wants to. Be curious. Allow yourself to be surprised.

Grief can coexist with gratitude

When we make space for grief to find a home within us, we become aware that we also have spaces for other, very different feelings. Grief can sit within us; so, simultaneously, can joy and gratitude. A person can bemoan her illness and be grateful for the relationships that sustain her during difficult times. A person can be furious about the losses she’s undergoing and joyful about the positive elements of her life. As with grief, our spaces for gratitude and joy should also feel flexible: sometimes we will feel very full with joy and thanks; other times we will find it hard to locate them.

As you did with grief, make a list of things in your life for which you’re grateful. What do you feel as you’re writing this list? As you did with grief, don’t judge your emotional response. Maybe you can feel joy expand; maybe you can’t. Just let gratitude do what it wants in this moment.

Making space for being human

Sometimes it will feel that grief is a tsunami and that joy is in short supply. This is normal. It’s also extraordinarily painful. Your grief may feel so big that you can’t imagine ever feeling joy again. If you’re feeling this way, acknowledge the storm and know that doubting it will pass is itself part of the storm. Let close family and friends be with you. Reach out to a therapist to help you through the storm. This is very, very difficult and you deserve support.

When you’re not in the tsunami stage, you may feel that grieving should be over. Not so. Grief continues to be with us in more manageable waves. Let grief enter your internal “grief space” when those waves come. Acknowledge your fear that the waves may mean another tsunami, but know also that waves are often just waves. Grief can be present without feeling so destructive.

Grief Essential Reads

Letting Go and Letting Go and Letting Go After Loss

No One’s Ever Really Gone After They Die

Make it a habit to check in on all of your internal spaces. Ask yourself: What’s happening right now in my grief space? What’s happening in my joy space? Develop a relationship with the emotions that reside in these spaces.

For reflection

What would it look like to build a relationship with your grief instead of trying to control it?

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.