Processing Grief

These are notes I took after talking to my therapist about how to grieve the loss of my grandma in a healthy way.

• You don’t get over grief, over time you learn to work through the grief. The grief will never go away, you will learn to hold space for it. You’ll remember the positive memories about the person, but a key thing that happened is that the person isn’t with us anymore. So can’t forget that, that memory of their loss will always stay with us
• Be very gentle with yourself. Don’t take on anything “extra”, just do the absolute minimum of what’s needed - i.e. eating, taking care of kids, responsibilities that you just need to do
• There’s no timetable for when it gets “better”. Listen to your body, when you feel like taking on a bit more try it. If it feels like too much after trying it, stop and go back to what feels comfortable.. i.e. you could do a workout and halfway through the workout you could be like I’m exhausted and that’s okay.
• There are physiological changes that happen when going through grief. Take that into consideration when assessing how you feel - you can’t go back to doing everything you were doing right away. It will take time. With the changes in your body, you may not feel hungry, may have trouble sleeping, may experience headaches, etc. Take it easy on yourself and don’t try to do too much.
• Don’t make any big decisions during this time when everything is so raw and fresh. Wait a while (6 months - 2 years) before deciding to keep things or throw away things of theirs.
• Don’t judge your grief. Everyone processes grief differently. If you cry a lot, that’s okay. If you don’t cry, that’s okay. It doesn’t make you overly sensitive nor does it change your connection with the person. That connection and love is independent of how you process grief.
• When going through grief, try not to suppress any emotions. Let whatever wants to come up, come up. There is no judgement, it’s okay to feel what you feel. You can feel incredibly sad and want to cry AND feel happy and at peace with their passing. You can feel anger, regret, confusion, etc. All emotions are okay to feel and once the feeling comes up ride that emotion. Over time you’ll get more familiar with those emotions and how they feel in your body. You’ll learn to name them and recognize them. There is space for all emotions, not just one.
• Being strong isn’t not crying, being strong is feeling all the emotions you feel. It takes courage to feel all emotions and it’s very scary. Let them come, feel them, talk about them. The more comfortable you get feeling these emotions, the easier it gets living with grief.
• Take care of yourself - eat, sleep, rest. Do what helps you replenish yourself, what nourishes you. That could be movement, it could be connecting with others, it could be anything. There is no judgement in what you do to process your grief, it’s different for everybody.
• To grieve the loss of a loved one is a part of the human experience. There is nothing wrong about being sad, crying, feeling empty inside, feeling hollow, etc.
• Many years from now, we may still cry and feel incredible sadness and/or we may feel incredible happiness for the life they lived. Again, all of these emotions are perfectly normal to feel. We learn to hold space for all of the emotions.
• You can use spirituality as a tool to help you go through the process of grieving. There is no right answer when it comes to spirituality, it’s more about what do we want to believe? It’s about finding a sense of connection and meaning in life. If helpful, ask yourself how are we connected to others? What do we want to believe happens after death?
• Find solace in your loved ones. You are not alone in processing this grief, lean on each other. Connect, talk, cry, laugh, hug. With sadness comes love. We all loved the person we lost so much, and losing them makes us sad. There’s beauty in that love, and being surrounded with your loved ones helps make life more meaningful.