Learning How to Grieve When the World Moves On

It was 1:30 p.m. on a Monday when my client walked into the therapy office. He plopped down on his usual spot on the couch, the one he had been taking for the past six months, and crossed his legs in a relaxed confidence. The light had shifted, I noted, as our eyes met and I tracked his expression and body language. Actually, the light had not shifted. The sun sneaking in through the blinds was highlighting the same patches of couch and carpet in the way it always does in the early afternoon, but the veil of gloom that had found a home over his face had been lifted.

Just Being With Grief

“So I realized something this week,” he remarked, eyes aglow with wonder. “All my life I have been taught to ‘tough it out,’ you know? To ‘be a man’ and move on. Worked really well for my career and in sports, for sure. Honestly, even with my marriage. But you know something? This does not work with grief.”

Sam, a conventionally handsome lawyer with a tall, athletic build in his early thirties, had never known deep loss, let alone any serious failure, in his whole life. Up to this point, Sam had been dealt a fortunate hand of cards in life: growing up as a white man in an upper middle class family, successful in his career, popular among his group of friends, and happily married. That changed nine months ago when he lost his wife to an aggressive form of cancer. It was only a few months from when the newlyweds got the diagnosis to when he was saying goodbye, in a haze of shock and disbelief, to his best friend and soulmate of seven years, nestled in a silk-lined open casket.

“All this stuff we have been working on in therapy, it clicked the other day,” he said, and paused, brow furrowed in thought and eyes downcast. “Especially the ‘just being’ thing.” His eyes narrowed as he tilted his head slightly in wonder. Another longer pause. “I think I am done fighting against the feelings. It is too exhausting.” He sighed and looked up at me with a clarity I had not seen before. “I can finally accept my sadness.” The air felt thick with meaning as the words sputtered out of the depths of his being.

Sam had been doing a lot of “just being” with his feelings for several months. He struggled at first with the shock of it all, moving from disbelief, to despair, to fear, to rage, to sadness, to guilt and remorse, to a wild joy one day from the kindness of a stranger, and then to sadness again. His stoic attitude and forward movement toward life was deeply ingrained into every fiber of his being. It was not until his wife’s death that he discovered that life had another gear he could shift into.

The previous gear had led him to a drinking problem until one morning, when he woke up late for an important meeting after a bender of a night and felt desperate and urgent to find another way before he lost his job.

What We Are Up Against

It was an honor to witness Sam’s courage to put down his armor and be with the intensity of his emotions. This is simultaneously a birthright we are all entitled to as humans, and a privilege that not many get the opportunity to experience.

How can we learn to slow down in a country that so viscerally enforces the high-geared, testosterone-driven approach to productivity? Many of us do not believe we have the time to stop and grieve. The average employee typically has up to three workdays of bereavement leave, as if that is the designated timeline to recover from loss. With the loneliness epidemic and dissolving social fabric to hold us in community in these modern times, many of us do not have a place to take our grief.

For many of us, grief does not seem to fit in anywhere in our daily lives. As a result, we are left with no other choice but to compartmentalize, numb out, distract, and keep up with the rest of the world’s tireless pace.

It does not help that, to the general public, grieving is awkward. Grief, in most of American culture, is like the third rail, an untouchable subject that seems too controversial to discuss. So many choose to say nothing rather than risk saying the wrong thing and upsetting the other person. Or, even more distressingly, they fear getting too close to the shock of loss and accidentally finding themselves gazing out into the abyss.

The certainty of our own inevitable mortality is a truth that most of us try to avoid. In this dominant culture that so highly prizes youth, perfection, and productivity, death, and the uncertainty of when it will come, seems to have no place in our thoughts. As a result, the bereaved feel exiled as the harbinger of truth that nobody wants to remember.

Why Grief Matters

As much as we try to avoid it in the dominant culture, grief cannot be ignored. When we choose to deny its existence, we deny ourselves the love we feel for what and who we have lost, and for what might have been. We deny ourselves the space to say goodbye. In equal importance, we deny ourselves the space to acknowledge what seeds of reflection, meaning-making, and truth the loss has planted inside of us.

Grief, when unacknowledged, becomes a film over our heart. The more we try to avoid feeling the grief, the harder it is to feel the love, as well. When we do not grieve our losses, that love goes untapped, as if a log has fallen into the love stream of life.

As Sam began to accept the sudden loss of his wife, he discovered that his grief planted a seed within him: it was his ability to grieve that deepened his appreciation for those in his life now. When his best friend’s mother died, it was his own grief that gave him the capacity to listen deeply to his friend without judgment, fear, or anxiety. This was a priceless gift.

His heart had broken open to the point that he actually loved that conversation, as it helped him feel closer to his wife, too. Through connecting with others at this newfound pace of life, he cultivated an outlet for his love to grow on after his wife’s death, for that love to be recycled back into his own community, and out into the world.

Learning How to Grieve

The steps we must take to keep our hearts alive in these times take wild courage. And yet, grief has been with us since the beginning. Some of the oldest artifacts known to humankind come from funeral gatherings. Grieving is both a radical act and the most human act of all.

In choosing to feel, we choose the culture of awareness, strength in vulnerability, over the culture of denial. We remember, together, how fleeting this life on earth is. And in that remembering, something opens. The change begins not out there, but in here.

Invitations for Grief Practice

These invitations are not assignments to complete or steps to master. They are gentle ways to notice what grief feels like in your body, your relationships, and your view of the people around you.

Note: Details have been altered to protect patient privacy.

References

1. On the effects of testosterone on brain behavioral functions. (2015, February 17).
2. Society for Human Resource Management. (2008, October). Examining Paid Leave in the Workplace: Helping Your Organization Attract and Retain Talented Employees.

About the Author Amy Hyun Swart LMFT, RYT Amy Hyun Swart, LMFT, RYT, is a somatic-based grief and trauma therapist in San Francisco, California. Her work includes grief support, trauma, emotional overwhelm, fear, anger, anxiety, relationship patterns, end-of-life issues, and healing negative self-concepts. Her approach is holistic and whole-person, integrating body-oriented, relational, creative, and culturally aware therapy. She also leads grief groups, retreats, and nature-based rituals. View Profile >