Moving forward consciously after loss

This weekly column seeks to help educate our community about emotional healing through grief. People may write questions to Golden Willow Retreat and they will be answered privately to you and possibly as a future article for others. Please list a first name that grants permission for printing.

Dear Dr. Ted:

I’ve had many losses over the years and still I hear someone infer that I should just get over it and have everything be okay. This usually upsets me, and I realize that one of the reasons it makes me mad is that I wish it was that easy and that I could! I also know I get upset due to feeling totally disenfranchised for my loss and how I am feeling. What thoughts do you have on this contradictive internal and external dialogue? Thanks,

Robin Dear Robin:

You bring up many great points here in the ambiguity and dichotomies involved in the grief process after a loss. Loss causes discomfort and many different levels of pain dependent on how that loss has impacted you. When you have discomfort or pain, there is going to be a natural response to try to move out of that pain. Vicarious grief is someone who sees your pain, and it is common that the person or people that are witnessing your pain, want you to move through your discomfort in order to decrease their pain. You may feel pressure, from them or your own, to rush through your grief process in order to get back to the old status quo. Part of the difficulty of loss is that you cannot go back to the old status quo due to changes from that loss.

This may have very sad factors as well as new positive ways of being. For example, COVID-19 has wreaked havoc, trauma, loss and sadness for the world, and when the world finally learns how to navigate this virus without it dominating the way we live, it does not mean the world will go back to the old status quo. Hopefully, people will be more conscious of social hygiene, working as a collective, better science and being aware that pandemics are real, deathly and can and probably will happen again. New precautions and ways of navigating our lifestyle will be impacted with this experience and even though parts of life will regain normalcy, other aspects will be forever changed. You don’t “get over” your loss, but the change can grow larger than your loss, as it is part of your life experience.

What grief allows you to do is to take the time to feel your loss, and feelings from that loss, and then integrate your experiences into your present life. Grief does not negate your loss but allows you to build a foundation where the loss does not define and confine your present life to something that happened in the past. In order to move forward, you must consciously acknowledge your loss and then empower yourself to glean that wisdom to help you move forward with those experiences to help you grow and become more selfrealized. Even though most losses are not something you are happy about, you do have the ability to acknowledge that those losses are part of your life, but you still are empowered to live your life.

Until next week, I wish you health, healing and love.