Grief did not come knocking on my door with a warning and it struck my life throwing me into a black hole. Eager to help and support, my friends sent me articles and reading materials during my early days of grief. They were not only helping me to understand how to navigate through grief but also trying to comprehend the journey of grief themselves for being a pillar of strength to me.
Most of the articles/readings outlined grief into the traditional five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. To someone like me experiencing grief and tragic loss for the first time, the linear process of grief seemed clear and logical. Every morning, I would get up and try to gauge which stage of grief I was in.
Yet somehow, it was not making any rational sense.
What I couldn’t figure out was that if I was in denial one day and then moving on to anger and then bargaining then why after a few days I would loop back to denial and then so on; some days I would be in the state of depression. The whole stages concept was not making sense and it left me more frustrating as days turned into months.
My initial couple of months went from being on one stage to another and then going back to another. At times it was very illogical and confusing and the worst part was I had no one to talk to about it as most of my friends were also learning about traumatic grief through my experience.
It wasn’t until after my first visit to the counsellor that she shared with me an article to read which talked about the messiness and unpredictability nature of grief. It was then that the thought hit me, the thought struck me that maybe my understanding about grief is wrong. Search engines can hand out wrong information at times.
As time passed, I got introduced to other mothers who had been hit with the same grief; along with it, I joined some online support groups. Finally, my eyes opened to the reality that grief does not move forward in a straight path or rigid stages.
So, If grief is not linear, then how does it move forward?
My learnings about grief so far;
– Grief is messy and non-linear
– Grief has no end; it is a journey with no finish line
– Grief does not go away with time; it stays the same I learnt to slowly build a life around it.
– Even after years, grief can strike with the same rawness as day one or can recede completely
While many metaphors exist online for what grief feels like, a recent beach vacation, standing on the beach I realised that grief resonates with me like the tides:
There that evening on the beach, when the waves come up, I realised this is how grief feels to me.
– Some waves topple me down completely, making me sit on the sand till I can gather myself.
– Some waves create a slight imbalance but I am able to hold the ground.
– Some waves just come and touch my feet and wet them, leaving a slight chill.
– Some waves make me feel at peace whereas some leave me overwhelmed.
This is what grief does too.
And now I am at that juncture of life, where I have started accepting that this is what living with grief might look like for me in this lifetime.
The only thing I need to learn is how to pick myself up whenever grief makes me sit down and for the less heavy days learn to navigate through it meaningfully while carrying the love and memories with me.
This deep learning about grief has changed the way I look at my own journey with grief. The awareness that grief is not linear has set in; it does not move in a straight line.
Now I know that like the waves, grief comes with its own intensity; all I need to learn to do is to —find my footing with each wave of grief that sets in.
