Grieving process is not one size fits all

“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.” Sarah Dessen, author

Throughout their marriage, my parents built their lives around each other, their five children and our small community. So, when Dad preceded Mom to the grave, a sizable chunk of her heart and soul went with him.

Throughout their time together, each became their own person, pursuing individual careers and interests, yet their lives grew inextricably intertwined. In a paradoxical way, they were separate yet inseparable.

A year after Dad’s passing, I asked Mom, herself a private person, how she had adapted to so great a loss. While her grief was deep, she had found a way to re-engage with life and people.

“You don’t forget,” she told me. “You move on.”

Think back to loved ones you’ve lost, and the toll taken on your heart and soul. We’ve all had losses, some more than others, and all of us suffer the wounds left behind when a person we love is no more.

Your losses may have been long ago, or recent; perhaps both. Some stand out more than others. One, or a few, may feel so great as to define you, as if they have shaped your life and how you see yourself within it. So, because personal losses and the grief that follows can be crushing, how do we move on?

There is no formula in this regard. In most instances, the grieving process itself, one honed through countless generations, carries us through at its own pace and in its own meandering way. It prepares us to move on, but doing so still requires a commitment, and often not an easy one.

As my mother indicated, moving on is not about forgetting or even compartmentalizing (placing the memories in a mental “box,” away from one’s awareness and remembering). Quite the contrary, as one of my bereaved clients who lost her husband discovered.

“Since he died, memories of him seem like an enemy, like a ghost that keeps jabbing at my wound,” she explained. “It’s hard to understand, but the road map for your path forward may hide away in those memories,” I suggested.

Toward that end, I asked her to ponder several questions. If he could, what would her husband tell her to do, now that he’s gone? If she had died first, what would she have wanted him to do after her passing? If she wants to live in a way that honors his memory and what they shared together, what would that look like?

Although not put in the same terms, these are the inquiries my mother pondered before transitioning from paralyzing grief to moving on. Remembering (“You don’t forget”) is an essential and ongoing element of this transformation.

Memories of the beloved can become a kind of spiritual compass that one references when lost or confused. The client in question later reported that, when she felt herself emotionally stuck in her grief, she began conducting imaginary conversations with her deceased spouse. This dialogue became her mental GPS for how to move on.

Author Sarah Dessen wrote: “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”

And that “place” is where you somehow begin to reclaim and fully live your life once again.

Philip Chard is a psychotherapist, author and trainer.