The Language of Grief
Grief has been on my mind lately. I've been thinking about the grief I witness daily: the grief of a friend managing the death of a loved one, the anniversary of those who lost someone, the people of Palestine dying and grieving right before my eyes, or the murders of individuals and their families' tears. It reminds me of times when I ruminate on my own mortality and start anticipating my own grief.
I've learned so much about grief, but I don't know how to sit with or experience it.
Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross' famous five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) have been drilled into our heads about how individuals experience grief. While these stages have relevance, they don't capture grief in its entirety. Ross actually created these five stages as the stages of dying. She developed them based on individuals she studied who were approaching death, not the people left behind. She even encouraged people to stop using these stages to define others' grief.
Grief is the loss of something significant, and it looks different and is experienced differently for each individual. There are several types of grief:
Primary Loss: Direct experience of having a loved one die.
Secondary Loss: The ripple effect a death has on one's experience. This affects several areas of your life—multiple losses stemming from the original loss.
Ambiguous Loss: All the tangible and intangible things that can be lost but not named. This could be a divorce, a major shift in someone's life, or the loss of one's identity.
Anticipatory Grief: The dark cloud-like feeling of dread related to change that is to come.
Collective Grief: Losses that impact an entire community of people, e.g., COVID.
Cumulative Grief: When you don't have time to process one loss before experiencing another. One might lose a family member, and then shortly after lose their job.
Chronic Grief: An extremely intense reaction to loss that doesn't subside. The emotions last for a very long time and cause distress that continues to intensify.
Delayed Grief: Experiencing feelings of sorrow years after the loss of something or someone. The grief didn't happen when it might have been expected due to avoidance or dissociation (mind-blocking thoughts, emotions, and feelings related to the loss until one is ready to process them).
In Mary-Frances O'Connor's The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, she describes grief using a metaphor of "a stolen dining room table." She explains that the absence of something draws our attention, yet this "something" is nothing because it's physically no longer there. O'Connor identifies this as navigating "two worlds"—one being a virtual map in our heads, like a mental Google map. When we experience loss, this virtual map needs updating.
Our neurons continue to fire every time we expect to see our loved ones where we've mapped them in our minds. This neural trace persists until we learn and accept that our loved one won't be in our physical world again. This reminds me of when John Onwuchekwa described grief not as a journey we finish but as a language we must learn and become fluent in.
Moreover, the brain can be viewed as a "prediction machine" that compares new information to past experiences to fill in gaps, which explains why individuals struggle with accepting the loss of a loved one. One of the most profound insights O'Connor shared was countering the common phrase "time heals." She explained that it's not time that heals but experience. The brain continually notes the loved one's absence, using that information to update its predictions. We have to experience grief to process it.
Recently, I began to reread Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning, in which he shares his story as a concentration camp survivor. In the book, he wrote, "If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete."
Suffering is a part of the human condition. Stephen Colbert reiterates in his interview with Anderson Cooper, "It's a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that."
Stephen also stated, "Learn to love the thing that you wish hadn't happened," and I would add, find meaning in what you wish hadn't happened. As Frankl stated, when you know your why (meaning), you can bear any how.
Chaplaincy is teaching me the importance of helping facilitate meaning-making because it allows individuals to tell their stories. When individuals tell their stories, it keeps the person who passed alive, and the person who's alive, less lonely. Our suffering creates connection. Our stories connect us with others and their stories.
The grief isn't ENTIRELY you; it's a part of you. Andrew Garfield once shared something profound: "I hope this grief stays with me. It's all the unexpressed love I didn't get to tell." This statement highlights how when we change our relationship with grief, we find meaning. Talking about grief allows us to accept it. Stephen Colbert stated, "Grief isn't a bad thing, it's a reaction to a bad thing." This was encouraging to hear because we live in a society where the less we talk about grief or avoid it, the "better" it is. We've made grief an enemy instead of a natural response.
Grief doesn't have a "method," "cure," or "specific way"—the only way is through. Grief isn't something we fix but experience.
I want to share with you other insights I've learned about grief from John Onwuchekwa and David Kessler:
The loss is the tragedy; the loneliness is the trauma. (Trauma is emotional pain that can't find a relational home—Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald)
What the loss doesn't take away, the loneliness will.
Story is the way we metabolize grief. It's not about finding the answers.
Storytelling is a way you can speak grief with an accent of hope.
Death doesn't end a relationship; it changes the nature of the relationship.
You can be angry, but you can't stay angry.
If you own a restaurant, grief will convince you that it has a reservation and joy cannot have a seat.
The heart has the ability to expand.
Set a timer for grief.
The way you grieve doesn't have to be productive (e.g., eating with a friend and laughing. You don't count your laughs). Our emotions aren't productive.
Find your song, and let grief sing with you.
Grief is like the hallways of your elementary school. First day of school it feels like a Colosseum. After a while, you visit and everything seems so small, but in reality, you've grown.
Healing doesn't mean the loss is gone; it means it doesn't have control over you anymore.
You can't skip the pain.
The stories we tell ourselves can continue the suffering or help us find meaning.
The language we use matters.
Grief needs compassion.
Storytelling is needed for grief.
The way we view death reflects how we look at life. What's our relationship with death? What's our relationship with life?
Fear doesn't stop death; it stops life.
The stories you tell yourself repeatedly become your meaning.