Today, I want to talk about the good grief response which is your response and your choice.
Everyone is playing out a version of what this grief means right now. Grief comes from the Latin gravis, which is weighty. It’s a heavy situation that you’re in. And everybody is responding relative to what their tools are that they have to cope. And unfortunately, within our society, we’re not really emotionally equipped from childhood to deal with really heavy situations. So the white noise around a grief situation is pretty deafening.
People don’t know what to do. They either say a truism that they think is what needs to be said. Or they say something entirely inappropriate because they’re nervous about being around you when you’re distressed. Or they just don’t say anything at all. It’s quite a complicated place to be in and it can leave you feeling a little bit like a social leper.
So it’s really important that you take responsibility for yourself in this situation because everybody else is really not sure what’s going on. And right now, your future is really flexible. There’s been a gap in time and the stories shifted and everything has changed. And you need to be open to the fact that your journey forward is undefined and unknowable right now. And that’s okay.
We do live in a society that’s desperate to put everybody in a box. You become somebody who is widowed, or who is divorced, or who is broken hearted and going through a hard time. But prior to this misfortune that you have found yourself in, there were thousands of other little pieces of data that informed your identity as a person.
And they’re still there now. It’s just that people don’t know how to deal with this really big piece of information so they’re deciding to make it the whole. But your crisis is not your identity.
So the good grief response, which I think is the best response that you can have to a situation where you’ve suffered this massive break in your timeline and you have experienced extreme distress is to reflect, and to release, and to integrate this loss into your lived experience. And let it inform your life going forward. So my response to grief is your response and your choice.
If you like the message that you’re hearing, please feel free to subscribe to this channel. You could also head over to my website on goodgriefcoach.net. If you want to sign up on the email list there, there’s some free PDF downloads of resources that will help you as a grieving person. Or you can pass them onto somebody that you care about who is going through this process right now. That’s it for me. Thanks for your time and attention. And I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
