The Grieving Experience
Something happens to us when we experience a loss. A loss of any kind. We responded to the loss with various emotions. Friends this experience is called grief. A time of deep sorrow. This experience is inevitable no matter who we are. If you live long enough each and every one of us will have a grieving experience in our lifetime. Grief is one of the most challenging processes for us as humans to endure. Mostly because we were never given the tools on how to properly deal with a broken heart. The second is that when a loss does occur, we are then reminded of how easily broken our lives really are. In a strange way, we start to take stock of everything in our lives. We start to look at how short our lives are and how little control, we do have over them.
Grief can break us. It can bend and contort us in ways we never even thought possible. It shows us how vulnerable and fragile this life truly is. Now more than ever during the COVID-19 we are surround with loss. Sadly, we are still having a hard time accepting its ever nearing presence. When we say a loss of any kind know that some of this losses on this 45+ list include but are not limited to: the number one most devastating loss of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job, bankruptcy, illness, loss of control of one’s body, loss of a business.
We have experience so much loss over the past 15 or so years. And if you are anything like us you were/are ill-prepared to deal with your broken heart. When Austin died in 2006, from a drowning at the lake with our family he was just 10 years old. Remember we said the most devastating of all the loss can be death of loved one. This experience was like being run over by a freight train. And we were completely unprepared to deal with it. Here is the thing, we all know that we will die at some point in our life. We also know that others around us will die. We know this intellectually. However, instead of deal with it or trying to understand it we do this thing called avoid it. We push it so far down in our minds deep into the very back deepest parts of our brains.
Simply because we cannot deal with the anxiety it brings up. When our own personal loss occurred, we choose to run from it. We did not know how to deal with this pain. Sadly, those who surrounded us did not know how to deal with our grief, leaving us feeling completely lost and alone in our pain. Quickly, we knew we were left on our own to figure the grieving process out.
We find our defenses stripped and support system and coping tools non-existing whenever a loss strike. We are a grief-untrained world. But only going through the grieving process has the power to heal our broken hearts. Doesn’t that sound terribly painful?
Grief is the name of the process we go through to regain our footing. Grief is emotional. Grief is painful. Grief is powerful. Grief is ugly. Grief can be spiritual. There are no stages to grief. As much as we stand on the mountain top and scream this griever will still ask us what stage we think they are in. Grief is the process you lean in too. You do not pull away form. Trust us your normal process will be to resist the uncomfortable brokenness of your heart.
