How I Dealt With The Worst Grief Of My Life
Posted by Bereaved - 18/02/12 at 04:02 amCreated by Jimmie Burroughs
I have handled grief many times in my life, but the hardest grief I have ever had to handle was the lost of by wife who was also my very best buddy. Not only did I have to lose her to death, but I also had to see her suffer the discomfort and anguish of cancer and die a slow and agonizing death. Everyone must experience grief at some particular point in our life. I’d like to help you if you are experiencing grief now, or when you do at some future time, by sharing how I dealt with the best grief of my life, and what I did that helped me the most.
Grief is the physical, emotional and psychological conditions experienced by a loss of someone close. It is the body’s natural capability of healing our emotional injury. Mourning can be incredibly tough if there is a lack of understanding. Routinely it is experienced in 3 distinct phases which lead up to a final approval and capability to continue on with life:
1. The 1st phase is Shock or a denial of what has happened. This may last only a short while or can be extended almost indefinitely. The earlier one can get to grips with the unvarnished reality of it, the better.
2. The second phase is The Expression of Grief which can take many different approaches like outrage, depression or an over whelming feeling of loss. This can persist for a few days, or for some even a few years. I have known some who were never able to get past this phase.
3. The 3rd and last phase is Acceptance. The purpose of grief is to move a person gradually along thru all three phases till finally they reach the point of acknowledgment. At about that point they are now prepared to resume their life, or seek an exciting new direction for their life.
Understanding grief and knowing how to Deal with it is important. It isn’t that uncommon for someone to grieve themselves to death. Infrequently when somebody loses a family member, they also die within a few months because of the stress it brings to their body. Even though grief is a healing process in itself, if it isn’t understood, and if care is not brought to let it do its natural work, then the end result can be devastating. The target is to handle grief in a way as to bring healing in a fair length of time.
Different ways of replying to grief
Grief is a standard and natural reaction to any kind of loss, particularly to the death of a chum or loved one. People make a response to loss in a variety of ways. Some ways are healthy and others aren’t quite so healthy. Grief, itself, is a coping mechanism, but it is easy to hinder the mourning process by not understanding it and without knowing the proper way to work through it. Grieving isn’t a matter of just forgetting, nor is it a process that needs to continue for ever and ever.
There are many feelings that different people feel at the loss of a friend or family member. I had only a few, but each person will have a different experience; some will experience few emotions while others may experience many. The right way is to let feelings run their course. Here is primarily what I experienced when I lost my other half to cancer:
- An occasional Session of crying
- A unhappiness in my heart
- A feeling or sensing the loved one’s presence
- An occasional need to inform and retell stories about my loved one and the death experience
- An occasional feeling of restlessness
There are a number of other feelings that you might experience and that’s quiet alright; everyone experience grief differently.
Things I have done to help handle my grief
1. I attempted to give myself a satisfactory quantity of time to work through the grief process before going on to make major decisions or changes in my life. The time factor is dissimilar for everybody; some are able to get thru it in a few months and others take longer. For the most part I believe that I was at the point of acceptance and ready to move on with my life in a year. I do not mean to assert it was fully pass in a year though it was satisfactory. I’m really not sure an individual ever gets utterly past it. I’ve not yet and it is nearly seven years since my wife died.
2. Once you’ve worked through the primary grief, it could be good to restructure your life, or to better define who you are now. Death of a close loved one, like a partner, tends to change. Our view of ourselves as well as life. This was correct for me and I discovered that I was prepared to make some big changes in my lifestyle. It took almost a year to work it out, but when I did it opened up a totally new life which has brought much satisfaction.
3. I let go of objects that caused me to think of my loss. I felt a wish to give away most of my wife’s private belongings. I kept some of her jewellery but plan to give everything away over time.
You may want to keep 1 or 2 mementoes. For me , however , I feel I am going to need to let these things go bit by bit. I feel by doing so I’ll also be letting my spouse go, and letting the grief evaporate even more. I know my wife would not have wanted me to waste my life pining away for her. She would have wanted me to carry on with my life at the earliest opportunity.
4. I revealed that writing about my experiences in my blog helped me to see thru the bad and see the good. If you don’t have a blog, utilise a appreciation book; it will do miracles in helping to triumph over a damaged heart. There’s a lot of anguish and agony in life but there’s also such a lot to live for that over shadows the negative.
5. I started a new hobby. I started learning how to play guitar and sing country and gospel songs. It has added hours of pleasure to my life. I’m taking time each day to practice the new songs I have been taught and it also gives me a challenge and is a good source of exercise for my brain. It has been a consistent source of healing for me.
6. I joined a support group with people who also were experiencing grief. Generally the bigger churches have an ongoing support group. I joined one in my church which was very useful to be told how others were coping with their grief.
7. I accepted the help and support of others. I had a brother-in-law who helped me a lot by keeping in contact with me during the difficult times. There are those who love you that are nervous about you and they would like to help you. Let them whether or not it doesn’t turn out help you that much, they need to know they are attempting to help.
8 .I’ve a relationship with The Lord God . Of all the things that have helped me, my relationship with The Lord God has been the most useful. God guarantees his grace to help us in all kinds of negative experiences that we go thru in life. That involves the death of friends and even the time when we must face our own death.
9. I never used medication during my grief and would never consider turning to drugs and drink. Drink and drugs only suppress grief; they keep the method from moving forward so that an individual becomes frozen in the state of grief and can not let it do its healing power.
10. I became a volunteer to help other people. This is another thing that helped me enormously. I joined a body that did volunteer construction and maintenance for institutions and people that could not afford to hire it done. It required me to travel in my motor home to the locations and spend several months there. This won’t be appropriate for most, but there are plenty of opportunities for volunteer work in your own city or town.
Factors that impede the process of healing
Never avoid or minimise your feelings. They are there for the purposes of helping you work through your grief; let them do their job without resistance.
- Do not use alcohol or drugs to self-medicate or prescription pharmaceuticals either if you can avoid it.They only delay the method of healing and never help move it forward.
- Do not avoid your emotions by using work, school or socializing as a distraction. Facing up to our feelings allows us to handle them and to get them behind us instead of having them floating around in the backdrop to always be ridiculing us
Conclusion
understand that each one of us are different and have different wishes and to generalize the grief process isn’t going to satisfy all wants for everybody, but I do accept that a general knowledge of how it functions is beneficial for all. I hope that this post has been a help to you as you go thru grief or the time in your future when it does come. If it’s been a help, please share it with another individual. If you’re experiencing difficulty or you feel that you can not handle your grief, do not hesitate to get professional help.
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About the author: Jimmie Burroughs is a motivationalspeaker and author who has been concerned in teaching Christian Personal Developmentfor more than 30 years. There could be over 600 articles to help on his website www.JimmieBurroughs.com in your private growth. Be certain to take vantage of the FREE offer to get theeBook The 4 Pillars for Private Development while available.
