Disloyalty in grief is that experience of feeling badly for feeling ok. It tends to happen in those moments that you chuckle at something and then get that drop in your stomach—how could I have any other emotion besides the devastating ones?
I have yet to meet a grieving person who doesn’t have this experience.
We humans swim in emotions about our emotions. This second layer of emotions, namely the self-punishing and diminishing ones, is where disloyalty lives.
I have come to believe that disloyalty in grief comes from the unconscious asking of the following two questions:
·Have I loved this person enough? (You probably have & love is imperfect and complex)
·Am I already forgetting? (I don’t believe we can ever truly forget)
If you are grieving, that means you have loved, however imperfect that love has been. Please give yourself grace.