Here is a post that accompanies the video presentation on GRIEF WORK I shared yesterday.
If you missed that post, you can find it here: Grief Work: A Video.
If you haven’t watched the video and plan to, this outline can help you make the most of your time.
If you’ve already watched it and were overwhelmed with the amount of information shared, you can use the outline to organize your own thoughts as you reflect on the content.
❤ Melanie
Child loss is not simply an event that happens at a moment in time.
It is an ongoing, devastating experience that shatters our hearts, our relationships and our worldview. It impacts the remotest corners of life in ways we certainly don’t understand nor anticipate in the first hours, days and weeks. Processing child loss demands time, energy just when we have the least of those resources to expend on anything.
That’s why I call it “work”.
How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.
Frodo, Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
I use “grief work” to mean all the ways I (and others) must actively seek to identify, face, process, and ultimately incorporate the feelings, trauma and changes loss force upon us. ways.
It is exhausting.
It DOES get better though. I promise.
It gets manageable faster when broken hearts don’t try to run away, numb or distract themselves from the challenge. Grief will not be ignored or stuffed forever. It leaks out somewhere.
When we refuse to do the work grief requires, we delay healing.
Grief Work can be understood best when we consider it within the context of relationship:
- Relationship with ourselves;
- Relationship with others (including our missing child);
- and Relationship with God.
And I believe the work is best done when we set aside time, designate space and give ourselves and others grace in the process.
RELATIONSHIP WITH SELF
Nonbereaved parents (maybe us in the BEFORE) sometimes joke that their only job is to keep their kid alive. Even if we’ve never said so aloud, many of us had days when we counted it joy that we came to bedtime and had successfully navigated potentially harmful obstacles with our children.
It’s a horrifying shock to our core identity as a parent when one day that’s no longer true. We begin to doubt all kinds of things about who we thought we were. It takes great effort, courage, energy and lots and lots of time to examine and ultimately integrate these changes.
I find it useful to think about the process in several stages that often occur simultaneously and repeatedly:
- Face and Integrate the Changes
RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHERS
So much of life revolves around our relationships with other people-family, friends, coworkers, people we go to church with and even the cashier in the grocery store. A day can be made better or made awful because of stray words, intentional or unintentional conflict, smiles, frowns and kind gestures or funny stories.
There are so many ways child loss affects how we walk in the world and it absolutely impacts our relationships to those we love as well as those we simply bump into.
Perhaps most dramatically, it challenges and changes how we relate to our child in Heaven.
What kind of work is required to move forward in this new reality as a spouse, parent, child, employee and member of the community?
- Family-Including Our Missing Child(ren)
RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
It is common for Jesus following bereaved parents to identify with Christ’s words on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!”. Or David’s cry, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”.
Some describe their feelings (especially early into this journey) as anger. Others say they felt deserted. I say I was disappointed.
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
~C.S. Lewis, A GRIEF OBSERVED
Learning to hold the truth that this life is painful and the truth that God is sovereign and loving in the same heart is probably the most difficult work I’ve done in this journey.
It required me to do four things:
- Acknowledge Doubt and Ask Questions
- Appropriate God’s Strength
CONCLUSION
Much of this process is organic and different tasks, challenges and seasons present themselves as a natural outgrowth of time and experience.
It’s definitely not something you can rush.
I’ve always said that time does NOT heal all wounds. But there is no substitute for TIME.
That’s why you must set aside time to do this work.
It may be stolen moments for those of you with busy households and demanding jobs. It may be quiet mornings or silent evenings for those who have more margin in daily life. It might be a weekly getaway if you live with lots of people and have a difficult time turning down the noise of electronics or incessant “to do” lists in your head. But you MUST find time to sit with yourself, to listen to your heart and to hear from God.
You will have to carve out or find safe spaces and find safe people.
Sometimes it means seeking professional help from a counselor or therapist.
Sometimes it’s a friend or two who choose to walk compassionately alongside and who withhold comment and judgement about things they don’t really understand. They are a valuable sounding board for the stories we need to tell over and over and over as we strive mightily to make sense again of a world turned upside down.
Online and in person bereaved parent support groups are wonderful! That is where I learned the language of loss. It’s where my experience was validated and I was assured that everything I was feeling was absolutely, positively NORMAL!
Seek them out.
Finally, this journey requires SO. MUCH. GRACE! For yourself and for others.
I call grace the grease for the wheels of relationship. You are definitely going to disappoint and frustrate yourself and folks you come in contact with. They, in turn, are going to step on your toes and on your feelings.
This is uncharted territory for all but the previously initiated and it’s rough going, my friend.
Try to always assume the best and practice compassion.
If you can’t muster it, then choose retreat until you are stronger and more equipped to have that difficult conversation or encounter. But don’t stop communicating. At least say, “Hey, I am not in a place to talk about this right now. I’ll let you know when I’m able.”
No one knows what’s in your heart and mind but you and Jesus. Give the folks around you a break.
I am more whole, more at peace and more capable of participating in the life I have while acknowledging and integrating the life I didn’t choose than I was even two years ago.
My faith is intact.
My family is learning, loving and living together.
I don’t fall so deeply into the well of despair as I once did and when I do I can scramble back out again.
I am not unique or special. God loves you too. He will, if you allow Him, bring hope and healing to your heart as well.
When we dream with God, our dreams-even in burial-are not lost; they are planted. God never forgets the ‘kernel of wheat [that] falls to the ground and dies’ (John 12:24).
What grows from that painful planting is God’s business. But sowing in faith is ours and, like the early disciples, our faithfulness is never sown in vain.
~Alicia Britt Chole, 40 DAYS OF DECREASE
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