Commusings: Where Loss Leaves You by David Kessler

At one of my grief workshops, two women around the same age shared stories of losing their siblings. The first woman told us through sobs about her sister’s death from cancer. “She was my best friend, the person I trusted more than anyone else on earth. I really don’t see a future without her,” she said. 

The second woman’s brother had been murdered. “My whole world changed that day,” the woman said, but with a different type of emotion in her eyes. “Ever since, I’ve been committed 100 percent to stopping violence at any cost.”

Two women, two overwhelming losses, two completely different experiences. 

Our grief is as unique as our fingerprints. One person’s loss finds them at the bottom of a pit of pain. Another sees death as a prompt for meaning, action, and forward motion. It’s how we react to death that makes the difference between suffering and resilience, and between trauma and transformation.
 
The grieving mind often finds no hope after loss, but I want you to know that the potential for meaning is ever-present in our lives. The Austrian Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Victor Frankl suggested that when we are faced with a situation that appears unchangeable, “we are challenged to change ourselves.” By making the choice to do that, we can turn tragedy into an occasion for growth.

This workbook is designed to help you gradually, slowly, kindly, gently, work through your pain to find meaning and new ways not just to go through loss but also to grow through it. The point of these exercises isn’t to force you to find meaning but, rather, to know that days in despair don’t have to be your eternal destiny. 

This doesn’t mean your grief will get smaller over time. It means that you must get bigger. The experience of loss has an amazing power to transform us if we allow it.

But again, every loss is different. As I write in Finding Meaning, one of my mantras is: “It’s your job to honor your own grief. No one else can ever understand it.” 

Because no one else had the special relationship you did with your loved one. Only you know what you’re going through. But sometimes you must reexamine fundamental assumptions around grief, particularly if you’re feeling stuck in some way. 

If you think you shouldn’t be grieving or have no right to grieve, that will shape your grief. If you think grief is a weakness; if your family or friends think you shouldn’t be grieving anymore; if society says you should be over it; if you see your grief as pathetic, as a sign of weakness, or as a losing battle—all that has an impact on your perspective and on your healing process. Our thinking about grief is how we make meaning, and that’s why our first task here is to look at the perceptions and stories you have around loss.
 

The Timeline of Grief

One of the most common questions I get is “How long am I going to grieve?” 

Or, “How long is my sister or my friend or my husband going to grieve?” 

My answer is always “How long is the person who died going to be dead? Because if they’re going to be dead for a long time, you are going to grieve for a long time.” 

It doesn’t mean you will always grieve with pain. To me, one of the goals is, in time, at your own pace, in your own way, you can learn to grieve with more love than pain.

Unfortunately, there’s so much judgment around our grief—from society, from family, from others who have not had a loss. These judgments get in the way of the grieving process, particularly when we’re judging ourselves. It’s been a year! Why am I still crying? It’s been five years. Why am I not over this yet? 

So many times we think we should be in a different place than we are. That’s why I want to do an exercise that considers where you are in your grief. This isn’t about the weeks, months, or years since your loved one died. Think of this as a measure of your relationship with grief itself.

Where are you in grief? From the list below, put a check mark by one or more statements you believe about your grief:

☐ My grief hasn’t hit me yet.
☐ Time will not change this pain.
☐ Grief is right on time.
☐ I should be over grief by now.
☐ My grief is lasting too long.
☐ I’m stuck in grief. 
☐ It’s time to move on.
☐ I’m backsliding in grief.
☐ My grief is healing.
☐ My grief has become manageable.
☐ Grief is part of me but doesn’t define me.
 
Let’s do that again, but this time, put a check mark by where you think you should
be in your grief:

☐ My grief hasn’t hit me yet.
☐ Time will not change this pain.
☐ Grief is right on time.
☐ I should be over grief by now.
☐ My grief is lasting too long.
☐ I’m stuck in grief. 
☐ It’s time to move on.
☐ I’m backsliding in grief.
☐ My grief is healing.
☐ My grief has become manageable.
☐ Grief is part of me but doesn’t define me.

Finally, put a check mark by what you think others (friends, family, society) believe about your grief:

☐ My grief hasn’t hit me yet.
☐ Time will not change this pain.
☐ Grief is right on time.
☐ I should be over grief by now.
☐ My grief is lasting too long.
☐ I’m stuck in grief. 
☐ It’s time to move on.
☐ I’m backsliding in grief.
☐ My grief is healing.
☐ My grief has become manageable.
☐ Grief is part of me but doesn’t define me.

It’s interesting to notice how those check marks match up, or don’t match up, based on judgments. If the responses above are in sync or out of sync, think about what’s causing that. Are you telling yourself your grief isn’t where it should be due to some preconceived notion about how this process works? Have the people weighing in on your grief experienced grief the same way you are? 

For instance, is your sister telling you it’s time to move on as a widow when, in fact, her husband is still alive? If so, that matters. It reminds me of a quote from the poet Rumi: “If you embark on a journey, don’t ask directions from someone who has never left home.” 

Only you know what you’re going through, so take a minute to reflect on anything that surprised you in identifying “where you are” in your grief. How does your current status with grief differ from the “shoulds” both inside you and around you?
 

 David Kessler is one of the world's foremost experts on grief and loss. His decades of experience with thousands of people on the edge of life and death has taught him the secrets to living a happy and fulfilled life, even after life's tragedies. He is the author of six books, including his latest bestselling book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. He coauthored two books with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. His new online model of grief support, Tender Hearts, offers over twenty-five groups and he leads one of the most respected Grief Educator Certification programs. He is the founder of Grief.com.