RUBY CARMEN explores the often repressed emotion of grief, and shares some ways we can accept it, value the meaning behind it, and integrate it into our being as an expression of love.
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.
All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat,
and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
—Jamie Anderson
Grief, it seems, is often unsaid, unexpressed, and avoided at all costs, until we are overwhelmed and it looms large and can no longer be denied. Since the pandemic, grief has been an undercurrent, and at times the feeling is palpable. It seems that there is little space for it to be expressed, never mind honored.
Grief is understood as a natural human response to loss, and in particular to loved ones. It covers so many situations, not only death or separation; it can be the loss of a dream or a friendship; it can be a divorce, a miscarriage, unemployment, or even retirement.1 Needless to say, the pain of the loss can be overpowering, bringing us to our knees, both literally and metaphorically.
From a personal viewpoint, I am able to name a number of life situations that have triggered grief in me that can be felt in the heart and in a way demand to be processed rather than pushed aside until a more convenient moment.
Grief can take the form of a cycle, that is to say denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. Not necessarily in a set order, one after the next; it can move in circles, leap frogging over one element, even a mix of one or more of these elements. These stages were conceptualized by the Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying (1991). She is considered a pioneer in the West for end-of-life care and near-death studies.
What has become apparent to me personally, and also while witnessing friends and dear ones come to terms with loss, is the impact of religion, spirituality, culture, and societal norms on the form in which grief is permissible. What comes to me is that we could do better. Are our coping mechanisms enough?
Oftentimes, grief is hidden, buried deep in our hearts. It can be like an old wound that remains inside, nameless, formless, and then something in the present touches on it and we are reminded that it is still there, sitting silently, waiting.
Oftentimes, grief is hidden, buried deep in our hearts.
It can be like an old wound that remains inside, nameless, formless,
and then something in the present touches on it
and we are reminded that it is still there, sitting silently, waiting.
One approach that came into my field of consciousness was to “talk” to the grief and, in doing so, recognize that it exists rather than pretending it is not there, that it has been dealt with, processed in whatever way we might explain it away to ourselves. In order to “survive,” our emotions, especially big, heavy ones, get stored away under the category of “I will come back to this later,” or “I can’t deal with this right now, I have a job to do,” and other such rationalizations. In the busy modern world, it seems there is no time or appropriate space to deal with grief or loss.
Talking to grief goes like this:
Me: Oh, it’s you? I thought you had gone.
Grief: No, I am still here, I never left you.
Me: It hurts and I keep thinking that you might go away, and leave me in peace.
Grief: Well, it doesn’t seem to work that way, you know. I am part of you, not separate. In fact, you are holding onto me, not the other way round.
Me: (Laughing) You don’t say. So tell me, grief, what do I do? How can I get through this grief that reappears especially when I least expect it.
Grief: Get through?
Me: Yes.
Grief: You know about acceptance?
Me: Yes. Sometimes this acceptance business is hard to actually do. It can happen at a mental or intellectual level, and then all of a sudden, it is so overwhelming and difficult. It needs to be at the level of the heart.
Grief: Your heart, yes, and also self-compassion. To grieve is a natural thing. It tells you that you are human and capable of loving, of love.
Me: So, accepting that I feel grief and that it hurts bad, not to mention giving myself some compassion, can help, right?
Grief: That’s right. It can help release the pain of the loss, and it can dissolve in your tears and in the sharing of your grieving pains.
This is the conversation thus far. Grief need not be an enemy or “avoided like the plague,” as the English expression goes. Instead, at an individual and collective level, we can embrace it and ask how we can allow ourselves to feel grief and grow from it rather than be overwhelmed by it. And we can consider reaching out to empathic elders, dear ones, therapists, counsellors, and support groups wherever there is a safe space to give voice to grief.
Grief need not be an enemy or “avoided like the plague,” as
the English expression goes. Instead, at an individual and
collective level, we can embrace it and ask how we can allow
ourselves to feel grief and grow from it rather than be overwhelmed by it.
1 https://www.helpguide.org/articles/grief/coping-with-grief-and-loss.htm
Ruby Carmen
