• Loss of hobbies

• Lack of sense of Self

• Perimenopause/Menopause

• Being called names

• Feeling misunderstood

These are common and uncommon griefs that we deal with as caregivers. I have met so many people who assume they are depressed, anxious, have anger issues, have trust issues, and more. But, really, what it came down to was grief. Grief is normal. It is inevitable. There is nothing wrong with grief.

Despite how normal grief is, society has not portrayed it that way. I hear frequent statements like, “Her husband died two years ago. When will she move on?” and “Your child is in a better place now.” Statements like these are loaded and there are plenty of loaded statements around our grief that make us feel like we are doing something wrong. So, we try to hide it. We put on a smiling face or we avoid social encounters. We go along with the statements but inside we feel dead, empty, and alone. We hate our grief. We hate what happened to us. We wonder when the grief will end. It feels unfair and it is. Grief is the most painful feeling there is.

When my first baby passed away I was stunned at how grief swept over me. All of the daydreams I had had of my child graduating, playing, and living were gone. It felt like an enormous event that somehow the rest of the world didn’t know or care about. My life froze while I watched other people living. I had people tell me, “Well, he was still in utero so it’s not like you knew him.” I had one person ask me what I had done wrong to deserve that. Although time has passed, I still grieve my son everyday. I think about him. I have rituals around him. And I understand grief a whole lot better.

David Kessler is a leading expert of grief. I have been following him for years now. He has a free podcast on Spotify called Healing, which I highly recommend. He said that grief is an old friend sitting at the table and that he always has a spot saved for grief. At first, this went against my life’s experience that taught me grief is socially unacceptable. Then, I began working with grieving people. Grief did not always have to do with death. Sometimes it was the cutoff my client was experiencing with a friend and other times it was a client grieving changes happening in their body. The more they ran from grief, the more grief chased them down.

You do not need to go through this alone. Fortunately, there are ways we can grieve that will lessen the sharpness and messiness of grief.

It starts with witnessing. All grief must be witnessed or else it will tell its story over and over until someone listens.

Finding meaning that serves us will also help. Too often, we snatch the closest meaning there is. In my case it was, “I must have eaten something that killed my baby.” Often I hear clients make meaning that sounds like, “I should have been there more”, “It was all my fault”, “My child will never forgive me”, and “I will never be happy”. These meanings don’t serve us. They add to our grief. Finding meaning that serves us will lessen the sharpness of grief.

Creating new rituals can also benefit us in embracing our grief.

You do not have to do this alone.