Good Grief: Why We Grieve & What Gets in the Way

What gets in the way of good grief and how to honor the losses in your life 

Grief is an unruly elephant that clambers into the carefully constructed rooms of our lives. We can’t escape it. We grieve for people, places, experiences, youth, land, memories, material things, capacities, relationships, roles, worldviews, beliefs, languages, the past and unknowns, futures and fantasies. Grief can confuse and disorient, conjuring combinations of sadness and relief, anger and guilt, fear and numbness, loneliness and withdrawal, yearning and apathy. And, contrary to popular belief, grief meanders. It rarely feels linear. (In fact, the stages of grief you may be familiar with were originally developed to explore the specific experience of grieving individual mortality. And even in this specific context, they don’t always go in order.)

Yet, to gather, love, lose, and grieve are some of the most human things we do. Grief reminds us that we have the capacity to open ourselves, to be close to people, to feel connected to our bodies, the things we collect, our communities, and our lives. Grieving allows us to process the emotions of a loss, accept change and transition in our lives, and adapt to, learn from, and grow into new ways of being.

But some of us never enter this life-giving process at all because we choose not to name and validate our grief. Our loved ones die, and we attempt to bypass grief by solely focusing on hope or positive thinking. We end relationships and try to escape through busyness or emotional (or physical) numbing. We experience a transition in our jobs and jump too quickly to lessons learned or “on to the next.” We lose material things and think to ourselves “at least it’s just stuff” without acknowledging that that “stuff” told stories of our families, our histories, our habits, and our communities.

Why acknowledging types grief is important

One of the ways to begin normalizing and validating grief in our lives is to understand the ways we get tripped up in our grief journey. Below are several types of complicated grief that may hinder our ability to process, accept, and adapt to loss:

Anticipatory Grief:

Experiencing loss before it happens. This is common for loved ones of those with terminal illnesses where grief starts early and becomes extended.

Ambiguous Loss:

Losses that are incomplete or uncertain which may or may not ever be resolved/clarified (Boss, 1999). Often spoken of when the grieved person or object is physically present, but psychologically absent in significant ways, as with dementia or other progressive illnesses. This is also a reality for many who are temporarily evacuated.

Migratory Grief:

Grief associated with loss of home, land, cultural or communal identity, traditions, and social roles. Often includes feelings of nostalgia or homesickness (Batcho, 2013) and may relate to international immigration (including refugees and asylum seekers) or regional migration. With the increase of weather-based natural disasters, like the recent LA Fires, migratory grief is becoming more prevalent.

Prolonged Grief:

Long-term identity disruption, loneliness, intense emotional pain and difficulty moving on. The diagnostic tool (DSM-5) designates that prolonged grief extends beyond 1-year from the loss, but is also careful to note that expected social, cultural, or religious norms should be taken into consideration (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). 

Traumatic Grief:

Grief combined with and expressed through traumatic stress responses like flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance of reminders, significant separation distress, anger, irritability, hypervigilance, etc. (Jacobs & Prigerson, 2000).

Disenfranchised Grief:

A denial or invalidation of the right to grieve in a way that is openly acknowledged, socially validated, and publicly observed (Doka, 2002). Disenfranchised grief can happen when the relationship is not understood, acknowledged, or deemed important enough to grieve by communities or institutions. For example, bereavement days off from work are rarely offered for extended family members, pets, material losses, or abstract losses (like memory, fertility, or mental wellbeing).

Once we acknowledge that we are in fact grieving (and deserving of grief) we begin the meandering. There may be seasons of grief that are internally focused and require individual processing. Emotions can be demanding, and memories flood and disrupt our daily habits. Grief is an experience, not a diagnosis; but if you get stuck, you may need to reach out for clinical support or help from a trusted mentor, pastor, or other spiritual/cultural leader. There are also times when we can turn to our communities for solidarity and kinship. This may also lead to public and institutional acknowledgement for grief and activism. No one’s grief process is the same, but there are practices we can engage with that humanize our experiences for the sake of feeling less alone.

Suggestions for Practice:

Grief truly involves meandering. There is no set way to do it, other than to acknowledge that you can’t go around, you have to go through. If we approach grief with curiosity, creativity, and connection, it can shift from being daunting and confusing to cathartic and transformative. Here are some recommendations for the journey.

Start simple:

One of the baselines for successful grief processing is a safe and supportive environment. You can create fertile ground for good grief internally by caring for your physical health and emotional wellbeing amid grief, which ultimately promotes resilience against complicated grief. Eat nourishing food, learn something new, optimize your sleep, drink water, move your body, say yes to things that bring you joy and connection.

Make it tangible:

In grief, it can be helpful to make the internal external. Plant a flower or tree that you can watch grow while you grieve, acknowledging the hard but sometimes slow work of grief. Write a letter to your lost loved one(s). Choose a meaningful object to represent the loss and place it somewhere visible daily, reminding yourself that grief is a practice of remembering and refining, not a task to relegate to the box in your head marked “done.” For material losses, list what you’ve lost (adding to it as needed). Replace what’s replaceable and find ways to commemorate what’s not. If you lost your home or a meeting place, recreate the blueprint, print or paint a photo to take with you into your next space.

Make it talkable:

Find a designated person who can hold the chaos and listen to your experience without offering advice or suggestions. Talk about your loss and the feelings that arise. Be angry. Express your confusion. Gather “your people” – family, chosen family, friends, community – to tell stories about what you lost. Grieve together when and if you can! If you know someone is grieving, don’t avoid asking them about their process. Ask and then listen, while respecting their need to disengage if they feel overwhelmed.

Engage with ritual:

If we make things tangible and talkable, we can transform them into ritual. Our religious, spiritual, and cultural communities have blueprints for mourning and recognizing grief. There are cultural practices that guide us through and give ideas of how to be with ourselves and each other. Jewish individuals engage in sitting shiva for a period of time after death. There are yearly masses in the Catholic traditions that commemorate losses. Christians have practices of prayer, crying out to God, and lamenting in word or embodied ways. You can also create these rituals yourself. When you have the mental and emotional capacity, plan some kind of grief ceremony for yourself and/or others. Create an altar with objects related to your losses. Consider including art, music, singing, storytelling, and movement to add symbolism, structure, and organization. 

Wait for meaning:

We can be hopeful and expectant that meaning will come from our losses because we humans are meaning making machines; but jumping to meaning prematurely can get in the way of resilience. Resilience for future losses comes from engaging honestly and holistically with good grief. 

Be Gentle:

Rushing ourselves or others through the grieving process is one of the ways we hurt and dehumanize each other. Practice self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-care along the way. 

As you encounter love and loss in their many forms, may you welcome each in and let them speak. And when they leave, usher them out with gratitude.

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

References:

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5-TR. American Psychiatric Association Publishing. 

Batcho, K. I. (2013). Nostalgia: The bittersweet history of a psychological
concept. History of Psychology, 16(3), 165–76. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032427 

Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press. 

Doka, K. (2002). Disenfranchised grief: New directions, challenges, and strategies for practice. Research Press. 

Jacobs, S., & Prigerson, H. (2000). Psychotherapy of traumatic grief: A review of evidence for psychotherapeutic treatments. Death Studies, 24(6), 479–495. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180050121462 

Rūmī, J. (1995). The essential Rumi (C. Barks, Trans.). Harper.