Day 86: We want our suffering to mean something… There is a term in the grief world called “meaning making.” It used to bug me because when I first heard it, I interpreted the phrase as an over-simplistic prescription for how people should go about their grief—I thought it meant that all grievers should find meaning in the most terrible thing that happened to them. And frankly, that sounded tortuous and impossible. I have come to terms with “meaning making,” only becau

Day 85: We were Born Knowing How to Grieve I would say that 75% of my work is being with people as they unlearn the gamut of perceptions or beliefs they once learned to hold about grief. As I watch people shed some of these, I notice how they 1) gain access to a fuller range of emotions and 2) begin to have a higher tolerance for distress. Many of my clients learn that grief in and of itself is not the enemy—it is the not having it or dismissing it or judging it or lis

Day 84: Acute Grief—A Treacherous Landscape Acute grief is the term that refers to the initial phase of bereavement. Acute grief is the grief experience on steroids—the phase of grief in which every part of our bodies, heart, and minds are overcome with our human biological and psychological system’s desire to 1) figure out what happened and 2) assess if what happened is actually real. Acute grief is peppered with so many landmines including post-traumatic stress symptoms,

Day 83: What Does “Progress” Mean in Grief? A couple days ago I mentioned the words that don’t seem right when it comes to grief. These include “healing, recovery, getting better, and progress.” To someone who is grieving, especially early on in a grief journey, each of these words are a bit absurd. However, as time moves forward, I have noticed that many want to understand what constitutes “progress” when it comes to their journey. “Progression” might look to the outs

Day 82: Holidays can be Hard Halloween kicks off what most of my clients find to be a nightmarish feeling of “how am I going to get through this whole holiday season?” Holidays, or any special day, automatically forces reflection—a reflection towards the past and memories of what was happening last year when our person was with us or the last time we were all together. Holidays highlight absence. In my Day 54 post, “Dreading Days,” I spoke of how these days are often th

Day 81: We don’t grieve to “get better.” We grieve to feel differently. What does “getting better” even mean in grief? What does “healing” mean in grief? What does “recovery” mean in grief? What does “progress” mean in grief? All of these words are so imperfect when it comes to grief and usually make me bristle because they are rampant in our progress driven society. I believe that the only “healing, recovery, or progress” in grief is a matter of feeling differently, one

Day 80: Showing Up Can Be Scary Clients share the experience of their induction into the club of grievers they never wanted to be a part of…and I hear often “wow—I had no idea,” or “whew, I really said all the wrong things,” or “I know so much more now and wish I knew these things back then.” It is normal to feel so scared of someone else’s pain or even paralyzed in how to act. Yet, there is still enormous value in trying, because I promise you, you’re not the only one

Day 79: “Just-Show-Up” Ideas In my day 49 post, “JUST SHOW UP,” I tried to offer a framework for how to THINK about how to show up. I didn’t give actual answers, because there really is not one right way. Ever. However, there are ways to try. Here are just a few ideas. Have courage. Take a risk. Do something that resonates with YOU. It’s ok that your showing up will look different from how others show up. Thanks to my dearest friend @gowhillikers who was born knowing

Day 78: The Yearning for One Last Moment I’m reading Katherine May’s book, Wintering, and enjoying her words which encourage the sitting with and allowance for sadness. Her offering on grief is something I hear so often. If I had one more moment… The yearning for that may never leave us. Yet our relationship to that yearning can and will evolve. What does that yearning mean? At the end of the day, it means we loved. And we lost. And we miss. And we hoped for something diffe

Day 77: Grief & Depression Many years ago, I asked an acquaintance of mine who was open about living with major depression, and had lost his beloved partner a year prior, what is the difference between grief and depression? Without hesitation, these words were his offering—“in grief, the worst thing has already happened. In depression, you never know where the bottom could be.” While this is not representative of everyone’s experience, I’ve found it to be one helpful d

Day 76: Types of Pain in Grief This need not be an exhaustive list yet these are the ones I hear about the most. How does your grief pain show up? #grief #bereavement #grieftherapy #griefcounseling #groundedgrief #acutegrief #traumaticgrief #disenfranchisedgrief #miscarriage #suicide #homicide #infertility #nondeathloss #divorce #petloss #complicatedgrief #griefeducation #ambiguousloss #childgrief #selfcompassion #bereavedparents #bereavedfamilies #bereavedfamilies #bereavedm

Day 75: Where and how does your grief show up? One potential maddening (or at least perplexing) question I ask folks is where does their grief show up in their body? And then I go further—if that grief had a color or shape or movement or could even be visualized as some object or figure, what would it be? The reality is that the answer doesn’t ultimately matter. The mattering is in the person observing their grief in this way, and then building a relationship between t

Day 74: The Fear of the Pain Not Feeling as Painful Many times, I hear about a fear that most people aren’t speaking about out loud. This fear has to do with feeling better or even different in the future, or not being able to access the deep pain that has been with them from the early part of their grief journey. This fear makes sense to me because this pain and suffering of our grief towards the beginning IS the immediate connection to the person, to the memories, to

Day 73: The Myopic Nature of Grief My first experience of grief was at age 4, after the death of my beloved cat, Elliot. Elliot went missing one day, and then the next evening, my dad found his body in the field across from our house. He had been hit by a car. It stuck with me that my beloved first pet died alone in that field—that he presumably was hit on the road, and then dragged himself to a place of solitude and quiet—a place he could be left alone to spend those

Day 72: Tears There are three different types of tears: emotional; reflex; and basal. Thus far, humans are the only known animal (with the exception of elephants and gorillas) that shed emotional tears. Not everyone who grieves does so via tears, yet I ache to provide a space for folks to have them when possible. The science is demonstrating that our emotional tears provide a release of stress hormones, as well as oxytocin and endorphins, offering an internal resource

Day 71: Anatomy of Grief-Shattered Heart In this work, I continue to be floored by how we can be at once shattered and whole, raw and powerful, vulnerable and alive. There is nothing like grief. In one moment, it can feel like it might kill you, and hours later, can feel entirely different. No one’s grief-heart anatomy will be the same….yet here is one take on it that reflects what I encounter most in my life and in my work. Welcome to my 100-day project. I hope to provide a

Day 70: “Acceptance” in Grief Out in the world, the word “acceptance” can imply agreement, or consent, or even acknowledgement that something is valid or correct. When we grieve, “acceptance” may be one of those words that makes you bristle (and rageful), and yet, the word seems to get thrown around a lot in grief. “Acceptance” shows up in the 5 stages of grief, it is in the 4 tasks of mourning, and it seems entrenched in the vernacular as some beacon that reveals healing. He

Day 69: We miss people in the everyday moments We miss people in the everyday life moments, in the ordinary, not in the extraordinary. We miss seeing their toothbrush on the counter, their glance across the room, their socks in the laundry, that phone call on the way to work, the text message super early in the morning, and even those annoying things they used to do. The ordinary is what becomes extraordinary in grief. #bereavement #grieftherapy #groundedgrief #acutegrief

Day 67: “Positive” & “Negative” in Grief Let’s be careful about the use of the words “positive” and “negative” to describe our own grief, or the grief journey of others. Grief is beyond positivity. Grief is beyond negativity. Grief is neither positive nor negative. Grief doesn’t want to be described either way. Grief is a way through loss and change. Grief isn’t felt because a person “is being negative.” It is felt because the person loved. And lost. And because there is

Day 68: Grief is its own entity. And it is not depression. I can get on a soapbox about how different grief and depression are. I admit it. I’ve already posted on it once, yet it feels important to return to once in awhile. Grief comes in waves. Depression doesn’t. Grief has depressive elements to it. I call these the “depths,” which are the lows that you have never felt before, the deep pits of pain, the searing missing, the grief-induced existential voids. Grief is a