Good Grief

I started looking for a grief support group when it became clear that I would not fully recover from my brain hemorrhage. My new self was extremely burdensome and uncomfortable. I longed for a ten minute reprieve, just ten minutes to feel like I used to feel, to be how I used to be. It was exhausting being me now. I missed my former self terribly. To be honest, I was a little ashamed of the new me. I didn’t like standing out in a negative way, of being “different”. Balance and walking was difficult and awkward. I suffered unusual fatigue. My hormones, which are regulated in the brain, stopped working and I put on a lot of weight. I felt like an unattractive lump.

I struggled mightily for improvement in my condition. As of this writing, it’s been twelve years since my brain spontaneously bled, and frankly, I haven’t advanced very much since that time. I’m simply learning to adapt. I have sporadically searched for a group to support loss for many of those years.

The groups I found were for people who had experienced the death of someone close. They groups I found were not for someone like me, although I have experienced tremendous loss in my life, starting in childhood. Whether your experience is loss of health, loss of a job, a divorce, death, you name it, the grieving process isn’t very different. Loss is loss. Grief is grief.

I have found that well-meaning people can say very hurtful things. I heard for example, “I thought you’d be over it by now”. “There must be a reason”. “It could have been worse”. Although those statements may contain an element of truth, they are totally unhelpful. What I needed was to express my sorrow and be heard, without judgement.

As a hospice nurse I wanted to understand and promote healthy grieving. I was also a funeral officient, certified by Doug Manning, a former pastor and expert in grief counseling. He wrote,“The path of grieving is not smooth or even well marked”.

In my mind I drifted back in time. I used to do a lot of hiking and backpacking on the Fingerlakes Trail in upstate New York where I lived. The trail is marked by painted white brushstrokes on the trunks of trees, or white plastic rectangles of about equal size nailed to trees. Some trails were well marked with abundant blazes to show the way. Other sections of the same trail had few  markings, making it difficult to stay on the correct path. To make matters worse, there were plenty of times when I had my head down, trying not to stumble, or I was lost in thought, only to look up and discover I truly was lost.

I learned and also experienced that one does not rise through grief in a steady upward fashion. It has been described as waves that keep coming and they crash over you. Occasionally, at unexpected times they will knock you down.

Also, grief WILL find expression in one way or another. In order to access healthy grieving, it may help to schedule time for reflection and tears. There may be “why” questions as we cry out to God, and that’s okay. Sometimes we ask why not expecting, or even needing answers, it’s just a cry of sorrow.

I have learned that grief never completely resolves. If you had a child who died, would you ever stop missing that child? At best, I think you learn to live with grief, to adapt to it, to make room for it in your life. Grief changes you forever, and since we can’t change the event that caused the grief, we can find purpose in it. We can be the person who comes alongside someone else. We can listen without judgement or trying to repair the person.

I’m thinking grief is like hiking an unfamiliar, difficult trail with plenty of switchbacks and elevation changes. You may have a guide, someone who knows the path and can lead the way, or you may bushwhack your way through the density, with little more than a compass in your toolkit. Eventually, you can arrive at the same place, but no one else can do the work. You must shoulder your pack and push ahead, no matter how much your body, or your heart aches. Usually, at some unknowable point in time the trail will flatten out. You’ll still have to hike it, but it won’t be as arduous.