Living with Loss
- Elaine Clarke
- Aug 2, 2019
- 4 min read
Over the last couple of years I've been delivering a course around 'grief and loss'. Of all the courses I deliver, this is by far and away my favourite. 'Your favourite Elaine?', I hear you say. Yes. My favourite!
The course runs across 3 consecutive weeks so only 2 weeks in all BUT the journey that people go on during that short time is wonderful to watch, and a privilege to be a part of.
We start by getting to know each other and starting to feel safe within the room. This is so important for the dynamic of the group. Not everyone attending is there for themselves, some are attending because they want to support someone who is grieving, or they regularly work with people who experience grief in some way. What I find though, is that everyone is affected by grief and it often brings up situations that the attendee hasn't properly dealt with. In all instances, for someone to face their grief, they have to allow themselves to become vulnerable, which is such a huge undertaking and extremely brave and courageous of them. This is why 'safety' is so vital to the mix within the group, too.
Through people's vulnerability, others see it's ok to share, and rather than seeing the person as weak, they now recognise the courage taken, and it can lead to them sharing also. This doesn't happen straightaway on the first week. As I've already alluded to, this is a journey, and each person must only share at the point they feel safe, stepping onto 'that road'. There is never any pressure to share and the attendees are also encourage from week one, not to try and 'fix' others. The 'fix' can only come from within and each of us has the capacity already there, we just need to tap into it.
Once everyone is safe, we begin to examine what grief is, how this differs to bereavement and how a 'loss' of any kind can lead to us experiencing grief in some way. Grief is an emotional response to bereavement or loss of something and we can't avoid it or ignore it. If we do avoid or ignore it, we do so at our peril, because the effects can devastating and long lasting.
For those who have lost someone through the death of a loved one or a friend, it's often surprising to find that other losses can evoke the same or similar reactions, and responses from the person experiencing that loss, and it always results in empathy, respect and a deeper connection for each other. We then look at the process of grieving and how it differs for everyone. No-one can tell you how to grieve, or what will happen to you, how you'll feel and what your reactions will be, because grief is very personal and unique to each individual.
What is important though, is giving yourself the opportunity to feel the grief. When we bury our heads in the sand, we do ourselves a disservice and even harm, because those feelings don't go away, they lie dormant and can come back years, even decades, later with unexpected results. As you begin to understand that grief is a process, you can learn to navigate your way through it and come out the other side, stronger, braver and more resilient.
On our final week we look at the future and find ways of facing the grief, moving beyond it and learning to live with the loss we've experienced. This session is still soul-searching but uplifting too and includes me asking the attendees to write a comment or sentence about everyone else in the group, that they place into an envelope belonging to each individual for the individual to open at the end of the session. For one gentleman who attended the very first session, this appeared to be life changing. He'd lost his young daughter at 13 years of age and had continued to function in order to help those around him, only for this to eventually, leave him unable to do anything. Following a stay on a mental health ward and several supportive groups and activities he was still struggling with life and facing the future. When he read what everyone else in the room thought of him, many of whom had been strangers 2 weeks earlier, he was amazed. He hadn't felt he had anything positive left inside of himself and had no idea just how he presented to people. This man was quiet, thoughtful, kind, and really funny and had a joke that continued across all the weeks with another person in the group and allowed his real self to shine through to us watching. By reading what others saw, he realised that he hadn't lost all of his previous self. He was still there needing someone to open the door to his future. In this instance it was a group of people grieving alongside him and understanding his pain because they too were feeling the same.
In more recent times I've had a gentleman who is terminally ill, attending with his wife. I've also had an elderly lady grieving the loss of her middle-aged son to suicide and a man who began to lose his eyesight during his teens and is now registered blind. Others have lost the mobility in a leg and therefore their job because they can no longer carryout their role, a friendship through an unresolved argument, their home and business due to bankruptcy, work because of redundancy...the list goes on. They appear, on screen, to be from the mildly sad to the gut-wrenching 'how do you come to terms with this', but they are all real, relevant and grief in their own way. No more important or less important than someone else's situation because if you feel something, you feel something and no-one can tell you that you shouldn't or to 'get over it'. You can't 'get over it' but you can learn to live with it, and find a new normal going forwards into the future.
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