Common Haunting Myths About Grief in Transition

by Jeff Simons

[continuation of The Two Phantoms of the Transition Opera: Loss & Stress]

It is all too easy, and normal(!), to feel bogged down by the illusive power of grief and loss. It happens to us all!

Take some time to slowly digest these common myths about grief, and be encouraged by the stability that comes through new awareness, taking the edge off of the overwhelm and hold it may try to have on you:

MYTH #1 : : Grief proceeds through very predictable and orderly stages…

Though we can intellectually read about the phases of grief, they don’t actually cooperate with a linear timeline!

Grief is more like a knotted ball of emotions to be unwound and messed with for awhile. You may experience several of the stages throughout a day, even. And you will likely circle back to some repeat emotions in the process. Coming out of grief is not a gradual incline either, but more like waves on a seashore as a storm fades, that lessen over time with each wave, but never fully disappear or are forgotten.

Your losses and griefs are, and always will be, part of you and your story; but the sting and manageability changes over time as you allow God to walk through the griefs with you.

Many have said about grief, “you have to feel it to heal it!”

MYTH #2 : : If you express intense feelings, or difficult questions, you’re losing control of yourself!

If you’ve spent anytime in the Psalms, you will see why David was a “man after God’s own heart.” He regularly spent time voicing ALL his emotions to God, in the trust and safety of his relationship and intimacy with the Almighty. As Joey O’Connor writes in Heaven’s Not a Crying Place, “If there is a wide gulf between your faith and feelings right now because of the hurt and pain you’re feeling, that’s not hypocrisy—that’s honesty!”

God’s deepest joy is connecting and being with us in our authentic and honest communication with him. Not only can He take it, he asks us for it, and He loves it! Feel free to approach the throne with confidence, knowing that the great Counselor of unconditional love is already waiting and eager to listen and connect with you.

MYTH #3 : : People with a strong faith don’t grieve, or need to.

Grieving is normal, natural, and necessary. God actually calls us to it, makes space for it in us, and meets us in the midst. The avoidance of grief is the greater sign of weakness. It takes courage to find space and time to stop, engage in prayer, feel your feelings, name them if you can, then (though not comfortable) SIT in that place for awhile. Invite the Spirit to attend to your soul in that place. He is already there and waiting for you. He will help you move THROUGH it, and you will be the better on the other side. The grief will not longer have the hold and sting it once had before.

MYTH #4 : : You should be pretty much back to normal after 2 or 3 months.

People might have this expectation, but de-cloak that from your own journey, and let God lead the timing. This will be different for everyone, as the causes, depth and effect of the losses vary widely. Let the process work itself out without pressure to “wrap it up”. Many experts have said you can expect to feel the grief for at least a year—the ebb and flow of the ball unwinding. Even years later, a smell, sight or comment may remind you of your loss and grief, and you may revisit some of the same feelings, ad find yourself reflecting once again. Time can help lessen the sting, but just like with real forgiveness among people, you must courageously go THROUGH the process to find the healthier footing on the other side. The cousin myth to this one: “Time heals all things.” This does not hold true if we are not first brave enough to journey through the valley of grief…

MYTH #5 : : A strong person should be able to deal with grief alone.

If Christ let us console him in times of grief, we can follow that example. Find safe friends and resource people who can really listen and hold this with you. Grief is one of the season’s that God helps leaders truly see the reality and power of His Body in action. See the photo accompanying the entry The Two Phantoms of the Transition Opera: Loss & Stress. If even Jesus models making room for others to help him in his biggest challenge and grief, we too can have the courage to “look outside” ourselves and humbly ask for companions in our grief journey.

There is no one right way to hold the pain of grief. But here are a few healthy suggestions for best practices for Grieving “well”:

• Let others in. [See Myth #5 above]

• Practice giving voice to your authentic feelings with a few trusted spiritual friends. Name them. Let them be felt.

• Talk about what was lost. Write about the loss. Do art or get creative in ways to validate and honor the losses.

• Celebrate the good in the midst, in an authentic way. Grief can feel like it’s coloring ALL in life, but the truth is there are always several areas in life that are still “going well”.

• Lament your way through the Psalms.

It may sound trite, but through courage and authenticity, there are true in-roads to making “friends” with your grief. God always has hidden gems and nuggets for those bold enough to traverse that dark mineshaft of the grief season. Gifts that make you that much stronger and more solid on the other side. Grief does not need to be the overwhelming driver in your life. You have many choices along the way that allows you open up places of stability and peace, with Christ as your companion, along this challenging road…

For reflection:

What is one way that you have found helpful to courageous sit in, or hold the pain of grief?

What might authentic celebration look like for you in a time of loss?

When Caregivers Hurt: Embodying Grief

When Caregivers Hurt: Embodying Grief

What does a caregiver do when they go through their own tragic losses? Although we don’t often admit it, many of us caregivers go into the line of work we do because there is something cathartic about helping ourselves through helping others. There is a natural tendency in all humans to want to avoid pain. Caregivers can be particularly good at masking their own pain through the perceivably commendable actions of putting other’s first. Quicker than others, caregivers can often see the pain on the horizon, due to our knowledge of grief, and run fast and far away to avoid confronting it head on. Or, we as caregivers can choose to give it the welcome space it deserves.

I admit, I am GUILTY of this avoidant and detachment posture. I’ve been contemplating around it these last several days of personally grieving.

When we recently received our new-to-us, one year-old rescue lab a little less than a month ago, we saw signs of a cold. The doctors sent her home with antibiotics, but as the days went on and the antibiotics lacked, it became apparent she was much worse than that. This past week, our family watched our poor girl suffer from the overwhelm of continuous and paralyzing seizures. Over the course of just one week, her whole body went from a playful young pup, into a non-stop foaming, and catatonic-state canine. Doctors could not understand the reasoning or where they were coming from. In just a matter of days, we saw her body deteriorate to an unrecognizable state. In the last 12 hours of her life, her seizures increased in length and duration. Her body violently flopping around the floor, a traumatic sight I never wished anyone, especially my kids would see. After praying with fervent hope just days prior, we made the calculated decision to put her out of her misery,

Just 3 weeks. That is the total duration of time that we had her. And sadly, that is the same amount of time we had our last dog. 3 short weeks. It was a similar scenario with different manifestations leading to death. We learned both had incurable diseases we would never have known when we adopted them.  

We now mourn the loss of both of these unjust and bizarre scenarios, where all we wanted was a furry new family member. And what we got was a list of losses a page long. Both Tracker and Azula were sweet animals with a lot of life left to live and a home where they were wanted and loved. It still makes no sense to us but here we are presented head on with the death of a loved animal and the grief that remains.

Grief doesn’t make sense. It is laden with unanswered questions and deep heartache around what never will be. 

Yesterday as I let the tears stream down my face, I had little energy to do anything else. And yet surprisingly after we cried and shared together as a family, my 7 & 11 year old children wanted to dance! DANCE! If I didn’t know better I would be angry at the insensitivity of the moment. But my knowledge of embodied grief told me that this visibly happy energy is as natural as tears. Kids demonstrate for us logical, linear adult-types that our body will naturally find ways to hold or release our feelings. If we learn to listen to it, we will be able to respond to the cries and needs are body is trying to communicate.  

Not only do we seldom see healthy expressions of grief we are fighting against what is the "right way" to grieve. We hear judgment statements like, “She was handling the loss so well. She was so put together as they buried him. He seems to be over it!”

Simultaneously, how can we criticize when we don’t know how to embody grief in healthy ways.  With the rise of modern psychology there is value given to talk therapy as an outlet for grief.  While talk therapy has proven beneficial in many ways, we quickly learn the limits of the left logical brain. While it’s not necessarily easier to talk about trauma or loss, it has become our adult form of dealing with the pain. 

Even as I write this, the words lack in explanation and healing power of the pain we recently experienced. The words lack, because words are meant to lack. We are not meant to experience grief in a logical, analytical, figure-it-all-out kind of way.  And yet that is often the only “culturally appropriate” model of healing that we are given.  We can’t talk our way out of the pain. The knowledge that our brain has a limit to how it can logically interact with trauma or grief directs us to discover other ways of dealing with grief. We must integrate our whole brain and consider how the right, creative brain can teach us to be active in our bodies as a means of release.  

Now known, but seldom practiced, is the understanding that grief can get stuck in the body…our bodies know and need permission to let go! Think of a recent blow up you’ve seen in a child or adult. This is an expression of built up grief. Doctors have noted there have been direct ties to headaches, stomach problems, back pain and heart attacks correlating to unresolved grief the body has absorbed and not released. 

In the well-known book, The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel VanDerKolk challenges us that we can circumvent the speechlessness that comes with trauma, grief and loss by releasing it through the healing powers of art, music, dance and movement. Bottom line, you have to feel it to heal it!

You have to feel it to heal it! 

As my colleague Eve Austin, a professional counselor friend reminded me recently, grief needs an outlet. She said, “______it out (dance, sing, cry, shout, run, walk, hike, stretch). Give your grief a physical and tangible outlet.” In times of grief we must find a physical outlet that allows your body to healthily engage and release the intensity of emotions that come with it. It’s not as natural for me as for my children. But it is persistently on my radar to listen well and discover new ways to release my body from carrying the burden associated with loss. 

Here are a few other ideas on concrete ways to “grieve well”:

1. Take a long silent walk with a friend.

2. Create a list of losses (i.e. the loss of dreams, the loss of money, the loss of voice, the loss of hope). Both the tangible and the intangible losses need a release.

3. Acknowledge these losses and schedule time to “work them out” via exercise or alongside a trusted friend.

4. Create a ritual such as lighting a candle once a week and space to think about the losses.

5. Do simple stretches while you create this space, thanking your body for how it has been with you in all of this.

6. Shake it out!

7. Dance it out!

8. Read the Psalms of Lament and write your own.

9. List off the gifts that came with what you lost.

10. Use color or drawing to engage.

Grief is really gratitude in response to a gift. My wise friend Eve also reminded me that “Holding both, the grief and gratitude, eventually starts to balance me out so I don’t tip over into the abyss of loss.”

Living includes loss. There is no way around it. I am to find my way into grief and allow myself permission and safe spaces to go there. This is the ongoing work of grieving that us caregivers must especially do. We must embody the grief and disembody the grief by letting it go. This is an act of care for ourselves and a model for those that we care for.

Grief is really gratitude in response to a gift.

For further thought:

What does grieving look like for you? What have you personally found helpful? Where do you struggle most?

What to do in the Waiting: The Questions of Complex Transitions - Part 2

Excerpt from What to do in the Waiting Part 1 “The period of waiting in transition has been such a long long season for me. I often felt like I did as a child in the endless snowy climate of Minnesota – will summer ever come? And like a bear moving out of hibernation, I’m ecstatic to see that spring is here for me and summer on the horizon! For those in the waiting of in between: Though your winter may be long, I believe your season of summer will soon come.

In addition to praise, play and explore here is the continuation of thoughts regarding what to do in waiting: The questions of complex transitions…

4. Embody my Transition - I am on a long journey to remind my mind to let my body express itself as guide and teacher. My call to action in my recent transition was to take my body on a daily walk or meet it on the mat in simple stretching exercises. I was to attend to what my body wanted to tell me - what it had been carrying all along. I would listen to its aches, moans and subtle plea to at minimum, MOVE! I became aware that everyday I am invited to participate in life in an embodied way - through my flesh and bones.

As I continued the practice of attending to the present and listening to my body’s needs, an increasing learning arose. The awareness of long-standing disembodiment or disconnectedness to my body over the course of my lifetime. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office once as a young person. I was asked by the attending doctor if the pain I was experiencing was sharp or dull. I sat dumbfounded. I had literally no idea what he was talking about. I said, “What’s the difference?” How do you explain and describe what feelings are like? When asked by my first counselor what feelings I was experiencing, I once again had no words. I was not aware of the lack of education I had received around what words went with feelings. I had no language to express the state my body was in. And yet now, many years and much education later, I’m aware I’m not that unusual.

This recent transition was different. I knew differently. I felt the whole thing different. It was intense and heavy and my body often just wanted to run. I became aware of the need to “read” “listen” and “study” what my body was trying to communicate and what I needed to do about it. A counselor friend described it this way, when we live under stress our cortisol levels are excreting much more than is sustainable to live with. That’s the loose definition of “burn out”. We literally have no hormones left when we’ve been living in a heightened state of stress. .

My body was trying to teach me, often in contradiction with my logical brain what to do or not to do. It was like listening to instructions given in an unknown foreign language. Many have said, the body instinctively knows how to move, stop for rest and breathe deeply. We stop at the end of a run or eat when we’re hungry or go to the bathroom when we need to. Yet many of us don’t speak the language of our body and DO NOT do these very basic bodily functions - breathing, eating, and resting. Especially in times of intense stress, a period of long grieving or after a trauma we must retrain our minds to listen to what are body is trying to say.

In transition, your body can be a master teacher providing great wisdom into your future direction. For years, but especially in times of stress, my body, when I listened spoke loudly through stomach pains and shoulder aches. It was crying for something to change! I just hadn’t been listening. I now credit my last transition with final decisions based on the way my body communicated to me about what I absolutely must or must not do. This became a profound way of listening and engaging in decision-making in a new way for me. How are you listening to what your body is trying to tell you in transition?

5.    Be the hope you need. Volunteer – in your greatest times of need, and especially in transition, look to give, not receive. When I think about the periods of major life transition over the course of my life, I’m grateful that several times I have had the privilege of a “holy nudge” to step outside of my own problems and serve others. I learned this hard lesson first the fall after my freshman year of college.

In April, as school was coming to a close, I received notice from the financial aide department at the end of my freshman year that funds were not accessible to me to support myself for 3 more years. I had a decision to make about how to raise or earn the amount I lacked. I decided I needed to work hard during the summer to manage the gap. Despite my best efforts and prayers, the funds were insufficient. That fall, as others returned to their dorms, I packed my belongings, said goodbye to the university and to the location in a short time I had grown to love.

As devastated as I was, I knew at the young age of 19, that I didn’t want my life to waste away. In addition to getting a full time job, I chose to explore two forms of volunteering. One of them was in the local children’s hospital in the play therapy ward. I was curious more than anything. What did that type of work look like? Would I want to do more of it in the future?

I quickly got to know many children who were hooked up to IV’s 24-hours a day. They needed frequent monitoring and multiple surgeries for complex illnesses I will never understand. My only job was to provide some form of joy and outlet for them to be children and not only “sick people”. As I carved out two hours a week for a year, I watched as some children improved and others did not. One day I arrived to work to discover, much to my surprise, my favorite child was no longer with us. The terminal diagnosis of children’s cancer took his young precious life.

I became aware in moments of volunteering like these of the fragility of life. That most of us have choices of what to do with unfortunate life circumstances. For many our pain is temporary. In my case these little children were hurting in profoundly more significant ways that I was in my transition away from college. I knew I needed to surround myself with them even for a couple of hours every week to remember that. I could offer them something I had that they did not - the ability to play; the ability to have hope. Every time I left I was more grateful for the life I had, despite it being so different and even disappointing. I, fortunately had the power to choose how I would build the narrative of my future. These children did not. My lacking became much less about a boulder of a problem on my path and more about seeing them as stones to use to build something meaningful from. What I gained from the experience of volunteering was profound gratitude and perspective of the bounty of what I did have!

In my recent season of transition I volunteered in the small ways that I could manage. I was once again afforded the gift of time, the resource everyone else wanted. I intentionally tried to move toward someone with needs on a weekly basis - whether that was through childcare, organizing, volunteering at a local charity, picking someone up from the airport or inviting someone for dinner. I didn’t have my natural energy and I REALLY didn’t feel like I had much to give, but I knew I had something small and I was always blessed in return.

I have the choice to dwell on my circumstances or to focus on making the most of what I have been given. Many times it is a subtle shift that changes me - when I extend myself to others I focus on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable.

Nevada Museum of Art

6. Keep showing up. As simple as this might sound, being present was the most profound and difficult thing I felt God nudging me towards.

When people felt uncertain and maybe even unsafe, the reminder was to show up. In showing up, I had to face people I really had no love in my heart for. Then I had to face my heart. I was invited to show up to understand my part. Show up to learn what to do next. Show up to be a part of the conversation. Show up to see where I was no longer a part of the conversation.

Likewise, I felt challenged to talk with others about all the ambiguities: “What’s next?” “What are you doing with your time?”. “Showing up” was my daily act of obedience.

In showing up, several things happened. I gained greater perspective outside of the one-sided stories I would tell myself and the small world I was creating. I once again received blessings. I met new people and gained new understanding of the way forward.

I was repeatedly faced with the graciousness of God’s timing and the lack of my knowledge about the bigger picture.

When we are faced with long periods of waiting we have the gift of deciding how we are going to posture ourselves. We have the choice to learn the lessons that only can be learned in transition. May we be bold in each of these difficult places to hear what we are to glean from this unique winter season.

Role Discontent

Originally posted Feb 11, 2019 on saraandjeffsimons@wordpress.org

Identity and Loss

Despite sharing the load of being a parent to young kids in a more egalitarian way, the current phase of parenting finds both of our young kids at my side of the bed regularly in the middle of the night. Pattering footsteps are heard for any number of reasons. In this particular stage I’m the one theywant first. A gift, I suppose… but a confused one for me, as I wrestle with God about how He wants to use me in this coming season. The cluster-roles of motherhood, transition coach, trainer and cross-cultural worker remain in regular tension.

Thanks to Jeff, I’ve been blessed in the last several months to have time away to reflect, dream, and consider what the next season in these roles might entail. A lovely week away with unlimited personal time, the ability to dream, sleep, and exercise at leisure allowed for an amazing time to consider the possibilities of our future. Yet as is the case in coming back to reality, I returned and re-engaged to acknowledge much to my surprise (again!), that my life consists of limitations!

You see, I’m not a “natural mom” in strengths or God-given gifting. I’m introverted for one, with ahigh need for alone time to rejuvenate and just function well. And because deep processing is part of my wiring and a high value, I need silence to hear my thoughts! For some reason my young kids don’t seem to understand that! A friend recently asked me, “Sara how do you get your introvert time as a mom?” The answer: “I don’t very often. It’s an ongoing struggle (sigh)!” My personality also begs to operate most effectively when asked to contribute my strengths of ideas,strategies or analytical skills. Sure, some of those are transferable to motherhood, but I don’t oftenfeel that I have my best foot forward in giftedness output in this particular role. I’m just not yournaturally-maternal, gentle, service-oriented, loves to [fill in the mom expectation here] personality.

Okay so maybe there are some idealized expectations to unpack there… but truly I wrestle with it daily! How do I reconcile not stewarding these other “gifts” during a season where one role takesprecedence? How do I find contentment amidst the grumpiness and irritation of mom-dum? When my calendar of events says “no upcoming events”, or worse, kids birthday parties for the next 7 Saturdays! In these times, I find myself down in a slump.

Even today, while I’m writing about calling, identity, and limitations, I’m loving the space! The research is confirming and I have a newfound hope in the coming opportunities to share withothers. I’m only slightly amused at the irony of being continually interrupted by a preciousdaughter, who is at home sick and sitting next to me.

I stop for a brief moment to cuddle and play a quick game of “I Spy” with my at-home-sick child and continue to accept my invitation to wrestle with my identity as mother and worker. When I’mhonest, I can acknowledge these interruptions make me grumpy, short-tempered and full of entitlement. I remind God that it was His divine plan for me to be hired for a formal member carerole when I was 9 months pregnant with my first child, almost a decade ago. He “called forth” my calling with such strange timing. I don’t want to wish these years away by any means. It’s these places of disruption in my calling, my plans, my best-foot-forward that I find hardest to embrace. The invitation to the disruptions being the life we were called to. I desire to live well into the roles of motherhood including the invitation to the LIMITATIONS that coincide.

It’s painful to face the unfulfilled longings left un-met within us. A single person desiring to be married but with no prospects. A couple desiring to be parents only to discover they are infertile. Another couple desiring to enjoy their new marriage, and quickly met with an unexpected pregnancy. A worker who desires to be seen for strengths in leadership with no possibilities for exercising those gifts. The role of missionary stolen as adult-caretaker of aging parents takes precedence. Whatever the unwanted role, how does one reconcile calling with God-given giftings in seasons of having to deny certain roles and accept other unwanted ones?

I believe the invitation is to acknowledge the un-met longings as losses. When I give credibility tothat which is unmet I’m met with sadness, and possibly disappointment. When I move too quickly past what is begging for attention inside of me, I hold onto it and without knowing, place those unmet longings elsewhere, often in other misdirected, unhealthy ways—on the love received from a spouse, on the success of a child, the gratitude of a boss, the performance of a co-worker.

These attempts mask my desires and longings only to temporarily escape the heartache and the reality of the things I dislike about the present. They try to erase the disruptions of life. Instead they take me on a winding road full of forks and turns, detours and dead ends. Here I will soon find myself back again and again if losses are unacknowledged. William Bridges (The Way of Transition) talks about transition or the “neutral zone” as the time to let go not so much of a relationship or a job itself but rather the time of letting go of hopes, fears, dreams and beliefs that we have attached to them. It’s in these attachments of hopes, dreams and longings that we redirect our stance towards a posture of embracing the losses in our current reality. We are called in this place and time to accept our limitations as a part of our calling, a part of our “normal”. To acknowledge limitations is to acknowledge loss.

What if instead of focusing on what we are giving up we are able to see what we are gaining instead? In this place of accepting the current reality and embracing the losses we are called to acknowledge that we are not in control. The places of “disruption” develop in us a deeper ability to empathize with others who are on the same journey of disruption. Our task-oriented selves begin to let go of our attempts to control, to direct, or to plan. In that space we are vulnerable. Painfully vulnerable. We’re invited into the place where our heart engages with the lack of control we feel. We mature in our understanding of development. We gain empathy for others. We gain understanding that life doesn’t turn out how we plan.

As poet David Whyte implores, we are called to spaces of alertness; and alertness is the hidden discipline of the familiar. We create in us a place to be moved and changed, impacted by the unfamiliar. We are put in a proper relationshipwith reality and the created order. We’re reminded once again that we were created and there isa great Creator with a bigger purpose than what we can fathom. A non-linear, uncomfortable road that when acknowledged and surrendered to, frees us from the unrealistic expectations that life is to be lived in a straight, continuous path. There is loss in accepting our lack of control. Simultaneously there is great gain in the freedom and invitation to accept the unknown and our greater calling in this in-between space.

[Finesterre] – “The road in the end

The road in the end,

Taking the path the sun had taken

The road in the end

Taking the path the sun had taken

Into the western sea

The road in the end

taking the path the sun had taken into the western sea

And The moon

and the moon rising behind you

as you stood where ground turned to ocean

No way to your future now

No way to your future now

Except the way your shadow could take

Walking before you across water going where shadows go

No way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let you pass

Except to call an end to the way you had come

To take out each letter you had brought

And light their illumined corners;

And to read them as they drifted on the late western light;

To empty your bag

To empty your bag

to sort this and to leave that

to sort this and to leave that

To promise what you needed to promise all along

To promise what you needed to promise all along

And to abandon the shoes that brought you here

Right at the water’s edge

Not because you had given up

Not because you had given up

But because now you would find a different way to tread.

Because through it all, part of you would still walk on

no matter how, over the waves.”—David Whyte

Reflection Questions:
In this particular transition, as you consider identity-challenge, what qualities do you feel God is maturing in you?
How does knowing that transition causes great upheaval but also qualities of persistence, empathy, & depth change the way you approach it?
What way forward have you found for coping with current limitations?