The pain can feel isolating, but you are not alone
By Patsy Kelly
Grief is the one life experience everyone goes through, yet no one wants to. It is a club no one wants to join, yet we all do at one time or another. Over the years, as hospital chaplain, I have recognized that we are a grief-avoidant culture. We want to pretend it won’t happen to us, and when it does, we shove it away, as though it is an embarrassment.
We all love, and share love from another in unique fashion. Though the experience of love is a common thread, the uniqueness of how that love played out over the years is entirely ours alone.
No one knows what exactly our grief is because every person who has died is unique; and everyone who loved someone who has died is unique. Our attitudes are different, our ways of coping are different. Our spirituality is different. We may have a church family or we may practice a more private, independent kind of spirituality. Some claim no spirituality.
Our relationship with the loved one is entirely unique; and no one knows the complexities and intricacies of our relationship. Don’t tell me you understand. Please give me the respect that this was a unique person and my loss is unique and powerfully mine alone.
In childhood we saw our families and friends grieve. Those were early lessons regarding “how our family handles pain.” Yet, each childhood was unique. Some families grieved with open expression and demonstrable sorrow. Others kept the pain inside, as though it was too private to be shared with anyone else. Some families taught us the church would be our mainstay. Others gave us the lesson that we should handle it on our own; and that to openly talk about the pain and anguish is a weakness we must not share.
By the time we reach adulthood, we have a storehouse of experiences as guides – for good or otherwise – on the ways to grieve. What we soon discover is that some of those lessons were unhelpful, unhealthy or just plain harmful.
Suddenly, there are no scripts, no landmarks, no guidelines. We can feel bereft and utterly alone and, indeed we are, to some extent.
Grief is an inside job. We need others around us and others to hold us, to respect us and our expression of grief. But in the middle of the night, and on the anniversaries of special events, and on the surprising mornings when everything is fine, but suddenly and without warning, we are stabbed all over again with the pain – then we are alone.
In the weeks to come, there is a Grief Group beginning in Jacksonville. It is an offering of safe space where individuals are respected for their unique grief. It is a harbor where likenesses and similarities can be shared among those who are going through the same thing. Any individual going though their own wilderness of grief is encouraged to register at griefgroupjax@gmail.com.
