The Journey of Grief: Embracing Change & Finding Meaning

Whenever I meet with clients, the subject of grief will often come up. Many people think that grief only shows up when someone dies. However, I have found that grief is more common than we think. With my clients, it often comes up when we start to unpack our frustrations and confusion towards our unmet expectations and desires. When we are finally able to name that they were experiencing grief, a sense of understanding takes over and we can start to move forward.

Grief is defined as the reaction to any kind of loss, whether it’s a person, things, or even circumstances. I want to add that grief can also happen as a reaction to something that shifts. The interesting thing about grief is that each person responds differently with how to grieve, even if they’ve experienced a loss before. This can often lead a person to feel confused as they don’t have a prescriptive formula on what their grief will look like. The truth is, there is no wrong way to grieve and when we can give ourselves permission to allow different emotions to show up, we can learn to move in a way that feels more authentic to what’s going on.

If you’ve had the opportunity to read Kassandra’s post on change, we can acknowledge that change is part of life. Change can move towards something positive or negative. One thing I often work on with clients is acknowledging that change always brings about loss, and with loss, there is grief. It may take time, and a bit of courage, to name that change has happened. But once we acknowledge this shift we can begin to accept relationships as something different than what they used to be or what we wanted them to be. 

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is a grief therapist and expert who has talked about the stages of grief. These stages include: denial, bargaining, anger, sadness and then acceptance. Subsequently, there is more research on an additional stage, finding meaning. We don’t go through these stages in a sequential order, and we often may experience multiple emotions at one time. In addition, we may feel like we’ve ‘gotten over’ something, only to realize that another situation may activate our grief and move us through the stages all over again. For example, we may feel as if we’ve ‘grieved’ the loss of a parent, but a familiar scent or sound may cause us to relive the stages of grief again. 

Another interesting point is that grief is not something that we get over. Some may find this discouraging, but I think it is a helpful way to commemorate that person or situation. Grief isn’t something that shrinks, but it’s something that we can learn to grow with and hopefully be at peace with it, knowing that grief can change in size and we can live with it. It also gives us the ability to look back at memories from a place of appreciation for what once was. With some hard work, we can start to look beyond the ‘why’ of what happened and perhaps find meaning in our ever-evolving journey.  

Therapy is a place that can give you the space to process what’s going on. Do you find yourself having difficulty moving through grief? Does it feel like grief takes up too much space in your daily life? Consider reaching out - we are here for you. We would love the opportunity to work with you and give you some tools to move with grief. Until then, know that grief is a normal part of life and give yourself the ability to name it. With that, you are more in control of what you want to do next in your life.