“Grief, like love, is the song of the soul.
Not all songs bring joy though.
Some are songs of cry.
Cry your loss.
Celebrate your love.”
~ Neena Verma
At the outset I thank you dear readers for your interest in a rather dense and uncommon, if not un-likeable, theme such as grief. Your engagement and comments are encouraging. Many thanks. Some of you have written privately with the request to demystify the phenomenon of grief at a deeper level. So here it is. Let me today attempt to take some mist off this complex but integral-to-life phenomenon called grief.
Well, grief as we all know, is a universal phenomenon across all cultures, as old and as true as human history. Yet there is no one-single definition or description of grief that would hold true for all grievers or all circumstances. Legendary psychologist, Gordon Allport, asserted that human beings are as unique as they are universal. Adapting Allport’s famous quote to the realm of grief, the renowned grief expert William Worden said –
“Each person’s grief is like all other people’s grief;
Each person’s grief is like some other people’s grief;
and Each person’s grief is like no other people’s grief.”
Worden is so right. While the phenomenon of grief is universal and common to all of us across humankind, its experience is uniquely personal. So unique that even for the same person, different experiences of bereavement may unfold grief very differently. It is very hard, if not impossible, to describe grief in one definite way that would represent a universally relatable meaning.
“Simply put, grief is a natural and normal response to loss, bereavement or trauma. Except that it isn’t simple at all. It entangles one in a complex maze of feelings. There is shock, sadness, pain, anger, yearning, fear, anxiety, guilt, loneliness, fatigue and more.”
~ Neena Verma
Metaphors of Grief
Grief has different symbolic meaning for different people. To each, their own unique metaphor of grief.
“Grief is a house where the chairs have forgotten how to hold us, the mirrors how to reflect us, the walls how to contain us. Grief is a house where the doors no longer let you in or out.”
~ Jandy Nelson
If for Jandy Nelson grief is a house with doors shut on both sides, to me it felt like a blackhole from where I felt no hope to return. I saw and felt darkness outside and within myself, that seemed to suck my whole being deeper and deeper. On some other occasions, grief brought along a tsunami of emotions that swept me away.
I have heard many grievers describe their experience of grief in similar metaphorical ways. A sand-dune, an earthquake, a heartless-robber, a hurricane, a swamp, a whirlpool, a blinding-storm, a cyclone, a roller-coaster, a web, a dark-dense-jungle, a dingy-cave, a gorge. Call it by any name or metaphor – grief is a labyrinth that we all must learn to wade through at some point in life.
That said, as we learn to navigate our way through this labyrinth, the same grievers also share meaningfully transformed metaphors of grief.
At a later juncture in my grief journey where I could witness my grief with an affirmative heart and mind, I had a different experience of grief. I felt as if my grief was opening me up to a new galaxy of love, on the other side of the blackhole that it earlier felt to be. A galaxy where my will-to-live and will-to-meaning were rekindled in a way that I felt implored to resurrect my devastated world, just as people uprooted by a real tsunami at some point rise from their mourning and begin to rebuild their lost habitats.
One griever for whom grief was like a never-ending ever-changing sand-dune, described it at a later stage like an oasis-in-desert where she could rekindle her abiding love for her late husband. Another found a hot water-spring in the shattering earthquake of his grief, that offered him healing and reconnection with his departed mother.
Such transformed metaphors of grief are testimony enough that in some sense, grief plays a facilitative function for our healthy adaptation to our loss-altered reality. In-fact also some bit of meaningful re-emergence in life. The experience of grief helps the bereaved accept and affirm the loss without denying, hiding, suppressing or getting drowned in its sweeping tides. Mourning (an outward, mostly in social setting, expression of grief) and grieving (an inward, private experience of grief) help people assimilate the loss on the trajectory of significant life-events, restore and adapt with resilience to post-loss life, even grow and transform at a deeper level.
Many Faces of Grief
Loss and bereavement are never easy to live with. Grief is essentially a painful experience. Even in normal, timely or expected losses, many a times the bereaved experience chronic or prolonged grief, especially where the attachment was strong or relationship involved a sense of dependence. In case of bereavement by accident, sudden, untimely or unexpected loss, death of a child, traumatic death by violence, crime or in an unnatural way – the likelihood of complicated grief is far more imminent.
Disappearance, deserting, abandonment, absent, or ruptured but not-yet-broken relationship can trigger a sense of ambiguous grief. There are rare cases like the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airline flight MH-370, where those left behind do not know when to stop waiting and when to start grieving.
Anticipatory grief, I suppose is commonly known to many, if not all, of us. The caregivers who attend on a terminally-ill loved-one, can experience a mish-mash of emotions such as fear, despair, guilt, even anticipated sorrow. Together, anticipatory grief and their unnoticed and unaddressed emotional and physical fatigue, sometimes trigger a tidal crash of emotions that gradually change the form and appearance of the shore of their life. If you have not yet done so, I would encourage you to watch the Hindi movie ‘Waiting’. It is a classic case of anticipatory grief entangled with several other difficult emotions.
The grief pioneer Dr Kenneth Doka conceptualized socially negated, stigmatized, denied or choked experiences of grief as disenfranchised grief. These are scenarios where the bereaved do not get social support or sanction to grieve their loss. As a result many such grievers feel compelled to choke, shut or bury their grief within. And in the process unwittingly end up prolonging or solidifying their grief experience.
Let me explain with few examples. Ask a women who has suffered still-birth, miscarriage or loss of pregnancy in some other way. Such a loss is mostly regarded just a physiological event, that does not call for even social mourning, leave alone acknowledging the grief of the affected woman and allowing her space and time to grieve. At best she may be allowed little time to physiologically recuperate from such an event of loss. In most cases, such a negated experience of grief leaves behind lasting emotional dents, if not serious trauma. I know this first-hand, having miscarried thrice in between my two children’s birth.
Another potential scenario of disenfranchised grief is stigmatized loss, such as bereavement by substance-abuse, drug overdose or suicide. And a uniquely peculiar scenario for disenfranchised grief can occur in case of the demise of someone with whom the mourner had a close relationship which had not yet been made socially open, or was not socially sanctioned. In such a situation, the social norms may deny the bereaved their experience of grief.
Whatever be the manner of loss and form of grief, it can trigger a range of reactions and effects at body, mind, heart, soul, relationship or social levels. I will talk about it in my next post. So stay tuned to know more about the multi-level effects of grief.
Meanwhile feel free to reach me at drneenavermachimes@gmail.com if you need some guidance, coaching, counselling or training in the ‘Grief & Growth’ or ‘Resilience, Life-Purpose, Transitions & Ageing’ realm.
And if you like, you may consider reading my books Grief ~ Growth ~ Grace – A Sacred Pilgrimage and A Mother’s Cry .. A Mother’s Celebration and/or gifting to someone on a grief journey, or professionals who work with those in grief.
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Keep affirming life in all its hues and forms. And above all, remember to hope, love & smile.
well said! Im a bereaved parent. Its been 21 years- grief still lives with me though I channel it in creativity -art, writing,teaching and mindfulness. If you read my posts-you will see excerpts from my daughters and our complicated and life affirming story. I will keep on reading your posts! You are helping a lot of people, I imagine. I hope to do the same for caretakers.❤️
With so much happening in the world, grief education that is provided in these blog posts has a big impact for all of us.
Thank you so much for helping us gain understanding of this phenomenon.
Looking forward to the next blog post.