Processing thru grief

 Processing through grief

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. ~William Shakespeare

The quote by Shakespeare is informative when coping with the loss of someone you love. The action of giving sorrow words calls for an intentional attempt to process your grief.

Sometimes people think that they can face grief alone, taking on the challenge. “I have figured my way out of many other things so, if I think hard enough, I can get myself out of this haze.” But this is a disposition that causes the human to operate in direct opposition to humanness.

Being human means that we come into the world first observing the world around us and becoming aware of ourselves. As we come to know ourselves, we learn, by trial and error to adapt to the physical world. Soon we are faced with the challenge to negotiate relationships. As we understand how to relate to life, we get to know others. Relating to other people helps us to know that we are not alone in the world of experiences. The task of telling someone else our experience is risky and can make us nervous.

“What will this person do with my secret thoughts?”

“Will this person use what I say against me later?” “What I have seen and done is so terrible. No one can handle it well.”

These are some of thoughts that keep grieving people from talking about their grief, but this also is part of being human.

Another aspect of being human is the act of processing our experiences. When we learn to share what we are going through with people we trust, it helps us to understand life better.

Carl Rogers wrote, “Acceptance does not mean much until it involves understanding. It is only as I understand the feelings and thoughts which seem so horrible to you, or so weak, or so sentimental, or so bizarre – it is only as I see them, and accept them and you, that you feel really free to explore all the hidden nooks and frightening crannies of your inner and often buried experience. This freedom is an important condition of the relationship.”

Giving sorrow words is the act of allowing someone else to offer me acceptance so that I can make sense in the human experience of grief. This is not always easy and requires more than an entitled approach but the back and forth of knowing each other. It takes talking.

Our support person/group must allow us the freedom to explore life as we know it aloud. When we share that experience with those who can offer the freedom to be heard, we open our hand to receive love, we also hear what we are thinking and learn that our lives resonate with what it means to be a human person.

Processing through grief takes the understanding of sharing without fixing, the discipline of listening before responding, the love to respond knowing the complex turns life can take. When we process our grief, we take the risk like stepping into the ocean. Little by little, we move forward. One-step at a time getting used to the cool water and then taking another step. We share, we listen and wait to understand what we just said. Walking into the wave of emotions is difficult but of great value in understanding life as it comes at us.

Processing through grief, giving sorrow words is hard work, but like other forms of work, is very helpful in our own self-development. We sometimes feel very tired after processing through grief because our soul seeks to understand life differently than we previously experienced. That father is gone forever, that child has been snatched from your arms, that wife is no longer under my care. We grow to love a someone as we tend to know what we can do for them, but now we are no longer at the center of their attention. We were accepted by them, on some level, but now they are not present to show us they care.

Talking to another human person about grief is personal, intimate, risk-taking but valuable in going forward and continuing to be human.

Give sorrow words and grow through grief.

Chaplain Horace Cutter, M. Div. BCPC