“Grief is not a problem to be solved; it’s an experience to be carried.” – Megan Devine
“I should be getting better, but I’m not,” a client once told me, reflecting on how she was
adjusting to the loss of her partner, who had died two years previously. She and her
husband had been married for over 50 years. When he retired, their plan was to sell their
home, travel out west, and eventually settle into a condo together. Instead, he passed away
following a brief illness, and she found herself selling the home they’d built together and
moving into a senior apartment, where she now lived alone. Two years later, she couldn’t
shake the sense that there was something wrong with her because she still found it hard to
get out of bed in the morning, still cried when his favorite song came on the radio.
My client was not alone in her belief that grief is a linear process. I’ve met with many
individuals who are not only learning to live with the loss of a loved one but are also weighed
down by the belief that they aren’t recovering quickly enough. In her book “It’s OK That
You’re Not OK”, Megan Devine challenges a number of cultural assumptions surrounding
grief, including the notion that it has a clear timeline and that it’s a problem in need of fixing.
Devine, a mental health therapist who lost her husband in an accidental drowning, asserts
that “grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution.”
What would it be like to approach grief as an experience to be tended rather than a problem to be solved? It wouldn’t take away the pain, but maybe it would soften our resistance and
allow us to meet grief with an attitude of openness and tenderness, somehow making it
easier to bear. When we lose someone close to us, we are not just losing a loved one – we
are losing the plans that we had together, the vision we had for the future. The magnitude of
this loss is devastating and can come back to us at unexpected times, such as when we sell
a home or celebrate a milestone that we had hoped to share with our loved one. It’s
important to be gentle with ourselves at these times when grief sneaks up on us.
There is not a “one size fits all” approach to grief work, but the healing process often begins
with giving ourselves permission to feel the pain of loss. Just as every person and
relationship is unique, everyone grieves in their own way. Devine suggests thinking of grief
as an experiment: “No matter how many times grief has entered your life, this time is the
first time. Each new experience gets to unfold – and be tended – in the ways that best suit
what hurts.” It can be helpful to ask yourself the question, “What do I need most in this
moment?” You might even make a list of things that help and things that make the pain of
grief worse. While your needs will continue to change from moment to moment, this list
could be a touchstone on days when you’re not sure where to begin.
If you find that your grief is becoming too much to carry, perhaps you might consider talking
with a therapist. While therapy cannot make the pain go away, a therapist can help you find
ways to honor and give voice to your pain. Wherever you are in your journey with grief, I
hope you’ll find ways to meet this experience with compassion and kindness.
Written by Abby Zukausky, LMSW
Reference: It’s OK That You’re Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t
Understand, by Megan Devine, Sounds True Publishing, 2017.