S2-E14: Dealing with Loss

Loss. A word that not only feels like a gut punch to the stomach and a heart that is forever broken, but it also feels like the tears and sadness are just endless. Grief is exhausting. Grief is draining. Grief feels like forever. Where do you go from here? How can life go on without the person you love?

Whether it’s the loss of a parent, a spouse, a child, a friend; grief is incredibly difficult. Whether it was sudden or expected, the death still hurts. The emotional rollercoaster of grief never fully goes away, but it does change it’s form. The key is to really go through it, as much as it hurts to do so.

The 5 stages of grief are, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While these stages were developed years ago, they still hold true today. In order to move on, you need to go through the messiness of grief. You need to feel the emotions from anger to depression in order to come out on the other side and find acceptance.

Let’s say you go through all the motions and feel like you have entered the stage of acceptance. First off, you are amazing. Unfortunately, it never really ends there. Grief has been compared to the ocean. Sometimes you are at low tide where you are at peace and do enter a state where life can go on. Then out of nowhere, something can trigger the pain that results in big huge crashing waves. The good news is that once you have gone through the stages of grief, when you enter the “high tide zone” you know how to talk yourself back into the acceptance stage again. It might take some tears to get there, but you got there before and you can do it again.

You are resilient. You are stronger than you think. It will be sunny again. Just remember, it ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s smooth sailing and sometimes it’s an intense high tide, all we can do is learn how to swim.

Tips

• Don’t throw anything away immediately

  While you may not be able to look at pictures or keepsakes just yet, hold onto them for a year and then when you’re ready, open that closet door and take a look inside.

• Remember everyone grieves differently

  Be sensitive to the fact that you aren’t the only one going through grief and the idea of grief looks different to everyone.

• Feel the grief

  Don’t bottle it inside, you need to go through the messy sticky emotional rollercoaster of grief in order to come out to the side of acceptance.