Grief & Loss - A Series
Part One
Grief is an expected, universal experience. So why is it so hard? Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, “Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with love.” In our busy, often overscheduled lives, grief can be not only painful but a real inconvenient reminder of what we’ve lost. It can hit us at unexpected times, even years after the acute loss has occurred. It can even hit us at unexpected times when we have not experienced the loss yet – anticipatory grief can happen when we know a loss is imminent or when we suddenly remember that nothing in life is permanent. Watching our kids grow up, knowing our time is limited with them, can cause a deep stab of grief in the same moments as feeling joy at having them in the first place.
As I decided to explore grief and loss as part of my practicum learning, I quickly realized that this is a big big topic that will be more than one quick blog post. I want to explore how grief is experienced by individuals, how we portray grief in the media, what’s missing in the discourse, and what supports are really helpful?
For me, my toughest experience with grief was a sudden, permanent loss of normal. Normal was ripped away in a second, leaving my family to grapple with brand new levels of pain and knowledge we did not want.
As days turned into weeks and months into years, we found a new normal that resembles the old one, albeit with some major missing pieces. Since that initial shock, and the following struggles that come with finding yourself the recipient of casseroles and prayers, people moved on and so did life. I learned to embrace the connection that comes from knowing traumatic tragedy. Putting this huge experience into one paragraph does not seem to do it justice, however I have learned to see this as a chapter of my life, not the definition of my life.
And so. I find myself nearly 15 years later still wanting to explore all kinds of grief. I want to know what supports exist and what barriers there are to these supports. I want to find out more about different types of grief and find the connections between individual experiences to better understand what helps us move forward.
As a reader, you can expect an honest and imperfect write-up of what I find in my research. As a student, my goal is to learn and as a writer my goal is to share. I am striving to keep an open mind and be ready to unlearn what I thought I knew.
I’d love to have your participation in my survey on grief and loss, you can find it here.
More on this topic to come in the next few weeks . . .
Contributed by Ellery Chyzyk, Practicum Student
Learn along with me - here are some of my resources so far:
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy; Book by Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant
Rising Strong; Book by Brene Brown
Good Grief; movie written & directed by, & starring Dan Levy
All There Is; podcast by Anderson Cooper (2022 - present)
The Science & Process of Healing from Grief; podcast by Huberman Lab (May 30, 2022)
Dan Levy’s Good News: No One Knows What They Are Doing; podcast We Can Do Hard Things (Jan 29, 2024)
Photos from Unsplash
