Handling Grief

Grief, it’s a simple word that covers an array of emotions.

Everyone handles grieving differently, this is an important thing to remember. Just because you got through it quickly doesn’t mean that everyone else will.

Grief is a mixture of so many different emotions but here’s one explanation that I love:

That it is really just love.

It’s all that love that you have inside you that you can’t give. It builds up into the corners of your eyes and then that love runs down your cheeks. It’s that lump in your throat that stops you from being able to speak and it’s that empty part of your heart. Grief is simply love with no place to go.

Isn’t that a beautiful explanation?

When someone is grieving, please don’t say ‘I know how you feel’ because you don’t.

You bloody well don’t. You may have gone through something similar but you don’t know exactly how that person feels.

You can empathise with them in their grief, saying something like ‘while I don’t know what you’re exactly going through, I went through something similar so I empathise with you’.

Let the person grieving talk if they want to.

Some people want to talk about their loss and the person that they lost, and others don’t.

While there are certain stages of dealing with grief, they aren’t all dealt with the same way.

Because we’re human.

It’s no different to anger, we all handle anger differently, just like happiness, sadness and yes, grief.

If you’re going through grief, remember this.

Grief never ends, but it changes as it’s a passage, it’s not a place to stay.

It’s not a sign of weakness to grieve, it’s the price of loving someone.

You need to feel the emotions that swamp you. You need to learn to get through each day.

The reality is that you’ll grieve forever. You’re not going to ‘get over’ the loss of your loved one.

What you’ll do is learn to live with that loss, you’ll start to rebuild your world and yes, you will get back into living and be whole again.

You’ll be different though, and that’s OK, after all you’ll never be the same after losing someone you love, and you wouldn’t want to be.

Remember though, that while the overwhelming emotions of grief can hit unexpectedly, it’s not healthy for you to unpack your bag and stay there.

The world does keep turning, things still happen even though you want them to stop still.

Grief is the price we pay for love and the only cure for it is to grieve.

I have written a book for adults to help them explain to children what is happening when someone has passed away –  Where Did They Go?  it’s now won three international book awards and is a simple, yet effective way to help them understand and it takes the stress off you in trying to find the right words.

Katrina-Jane