As I have been visiting with people in my own personal life and on the internet, I have encountered a common lie.

This is the Lie: You should get over your grief QUICKLY!

Recently I met one person whose grief was about three months old. He said he couldn't understand why his grief was so intense, after all, his wife died three months ago! After three months, he thought he should be 'doing better', 'getting over it' and 'functioning normally.'

Unfortunately, our society contributes to this fallacy. How many days do you get off work for bereavement? Most US companies give three days bereavement leave. Of course, when you come back from the funeral you should function at 100 percent!

Here are some points to remember:

1. The depth of our pain and grief is related to the emotional attachment we have to the person who died. *This is not related to how long we knew the person.

Tears and grief are the price we pay for loving.

2. Our first response to loss is shock and numbness. This is good because it gets us through the first weeks and even months after our loss. When the shock and numbness wears off we begin to feel the intensity of our grief. For most people the full force of the loss is not felt until the second and third month of the loss. Many people don't experience the full reality and intensity of their loss until the sixth month.

Numbness is a safety net that gets us through the first weeks and even months.

3. The grief experience is best described as a rollercoaster. In healing process we experience many lows and some highs. These up and down experiences are often violent, unpredictable and unnerving. We hear a doorknob turn, we think it is our loved one returning home. We see them sitting in their favorite chair. We smell them on their clothes. We get a phone call asking for him or her. We share happy memories and laugh. We recall a favorite habit or saying, we smile.

The waves of our grief will slow down and become calmer in time.

4. Grief is not something we 'get over.' We get through grief. We work our way through grief with tears, talking, and facing it head-on.

Nor is grief something from which recover. We are forever transformed and changed by our losses. We are not the same person after we have experienced the death of a loved one or a close friend. We do not recover (even though there are programs called 'Grief Recovery'). What we do do is this: we embace our pain and loss and take th energy and let it propel us into new vistas of emotional and physical life.

We will always be grievers; we will become reconciled to our loss as time goes on as we work through our loss.

*This is why many grieving people are not given the attention they should be. We may feel that the relationship was not a long one, therefore, the grief experience shouldn't be so intense. This is true of couples who lose a child through a miscarriage, or a fiance whose bride or groom dies before the wedding day.

Please tell this lie to go to hell - Time heals all losses - QUICKLY!

(c) 2007 Ronald Friesen

Also check out this post:

Wednesday September 20, 2006 - Tell This Lie to Go to Hell - Time Heals