Sharing this story is far from comfortable, but there is a requirement in my line of work called “Walk the Talk”. Loss and grief are no joke. If this reaches and supports just one person, no matter what side of the equation they are on, then I’ll consider it worth it.
In my case, synchronicity showed itself as a few friends reached out during my compounded traumatic experiences of loss and grief asking how they could best support their significant other through loss of immediate family members.
I thought, “Wow. This is really up for me.” Not only was I still moving through it, but now I was also being challenged to somehow channel support and advice for those close to myself and my significant other. Just wow. Probably didn’t slay that task at the time.
See this quick list to better understand what your significant other might be experiencing and need.
Most people will turn away from loss and grief toward what is far more inviting – which is pretty much anything and everything else, right? But the funny thing is, we will all experience loss and grief at some point. It will come in varying degrees, but it will come. If we turn away from someone experiencing one of the Top 10 stress-inducing happenings in life, who will we turn to when it’s our turn?
Learning through multiple compounded experiences, I can say that just one of these 10 stressors is difficult. And that when a few of these are layered and consolidated into a short intense time period, people around us may disappear. Our life trajectory may be forever altered. Sounds dramatic? Yep. It is.
Know that it is not you. Forgiveness is the way forward.
Where I grew up, sharing personal stories might be classified as “airing dirty laundry”. No wonder everyone is on pills, weed, booze, porn, TV, Instagram, politics, numbing, numbing and more numbing. Coming out of the Industrial Age, and now beginning to move out of the uber “connected” Information Age, many people still refuse to face responsibility. Perhaps stating the obvious for some but being in any type of relationship includes responsibility. As humans, guess what, we are in relationship every dang day. As we move into the next multisensory age, it’s beyond time we hold ourselves accountable.
Unfortunately, many of us grew up in families where talking about anything confronting was avoided completely. This, of course, becomes learned behavior handed down unconsciously from those before us. This lack of communication skills and/or willingness to talk about less than comfortable topics only drives disconnection. As we move into this upcoming multisensory era, boy are we going to be in for some surprises.
The good news is, this can be avoided. Like anything, it takes time and commitment. Not the kind one can schedule on a calendar or time with a stopwatch. Committing to take time to learn, understand, process, give and receive support, and be with what is. It’s a multi-layered process. It can move slowly. It can move quickly. Ask me how.
As a qualitative researcher and storyteller, Brene Brown famously delivered her talk on vulnerability at TedX almost a decade ago. Her research shows that this sharing of truth and vulnerability is what drives connection.
I also hear her loud and clear when she says, “Not everyone deserves to hear your story.” Living in our truth becomes walking a fine line. Boundaries are essential. We feel this bigtime when we are asked in the wellness world to “walk the talk”. Eeeek.
Doing this “right” is essentially impossible. As they say, yoga teachers are people, too. We are teaching as we learn, and we are learning as we teach.
Equally, there is no “right” way in a certain amount of “right” time to move through loss and grief. We are human after all. Yet those close to us may attempt to tell us that we are playing victim, not taking responsibility for ourselves, talking too much about feelings (yeah I know, it sucks!) or pressure us immensely to move through the process far too quickly so that things can “get back to normal”.
But take a good hard look at that person’s upbringings, backgrounds, life path and current realities. Not to mention – have they experienced true loss? This is not about comparison, but to simply notice whether they are coming from - an authentic place in offering opinions (or judgements) – or not.
We don’t know how people will react to loss and grief until we are sitting in the eye of the hurricane with them. We experience the trauma. Then everything becomes very calm, silent, yielding. However, we sense that the storm is far from over.
In the eye of the storm, it feels like nothing. Everything is numb.
The people closest to us may not see us.
They may not hear us.
Over and over.
Know that it is not you.
They may want us to snap out of it, get on with it, be “fun” again.
They may judge us, pressure us, and cajole us toward what they perceive we should be doing and how we should be doing it.
They may have ideas about how we should be acting, how quickly we should be making life happen despite this major event (or three), and of course the best way to do, well, everything!
Why? Because they somehow magically see oh so clearly how we should be moving forward. Frustrating at the time, but with time we gain clarity.
Know that it is not you.
The truth is that they are uncomfortable. This is partly projection. It could perhaps be partly due to lack of empathy depending on the people involved. It could also be a complete unwillingness to be with what is. Some people are also truly empathic or highly sensitive and even indirect trauma can be too much.
But this is also life!
As the person going through the loss, this is where we are supposed to find forgiveness. In all transparency, my natural reaction - again - was “F*CK!”.
With time, the best I have been able to come up with is that I, too, have not been in their shoes. They may hold a fear of death. They may have never taken a few moments to consider how this huge event is affecting the person directly related to the loss rather than themselves. There is a good chance they are coming up against themselves in ohhhh so many ways.
Shadows will be revealed. We can run, but we can never hide from our shadows.
The significant other, family, friends, and even co-workers, may have a few lessons of their own to face in this process as well. Shadows arise and we can run, but we can never hide. This is a process. This is a learning process.
This is life.
Moving forward, we try to remember that everyone will eventually experience loss and grief. Everyone will have to face this shadow. The loss may not be as epic or consolidated into such a short period of time, but no one is immune.
As much as it sounds completely crazy and unfair, this is an opportunity to love and forgive.
We take the opportunity to look at another and assume that they, too, are doing the best they can. We can only hope the same will be extended. Sure, this sounds outrageously mature and let’s be honest, most people will immediately think, “Screw that.” But here’s the deal…
The prior examples of why people either run or stay/avoid are all possible. There are also other possibilities at play that take us further into the psychological realm than this article will allow. But briefly…
One example, becoming very prevalent today in many trauma-related situations, is that those who identify as “empathic” come up against intense events that lead them to avoid. In this, they may eventually learn they are not empathetic, but actually lean toward codependent. (Don’t miss this link with Mark Groves of Create the Love.) But we can be both. Nothing is black and white. Another conversation.
This huge loss just happens to be a very inconvenient truth that illuminates the empathic/codependent’s very own survival mechanisms learned and developed within their family of origin which is to ultimately take care of oneself masked in taking care of others. Being giving is awesome. Most of the time, this person has no idea that their actions are stemming out of their own survival mode. They are not conscious that their giving and always being the nice guy is ultimately self-serving. Essentially, this person is unable to function through conflict. Most of the time this is rooted in trauma. When we have unprocessed trauma, we will simply cannot cope. Unfortunately, they have sometimes even convinced themselves that they are fine. And they will try to convince the person that is actually experiencing trauma/loss/grief at the time that they are fine in manners that are highly covert. This is damaging, but an extension of the inability to hold space for another. No one is at fault. It just is what it is.
Most of us have trauma, known as Big and Small T’s.
However, it has also been discovered that even a small trauma can affect one person as deeply as a big trauma affects another. Often due to past unresolved trauma of our own as individuals or handed down through our ancestry. Either way, we can avoid it, but the next experience often sits waiting in the shadows right around the next corner to offer the opportunity to learn, understand and transmute what we attempted to escape from prior.
It really all comes down to cultivating resiliency. We can do this by dropping into modalities such as yoga, meditation, and breathwork. There is no “fixing”. We are not broken. There is only sticking with what is, working through it, and enjoying the beautiful life we have right at our fingertips.
Another common person we run into during our experience of loss and grief is the “stay positive” person. Again, this a coping mechanism of their own.
Telling someone to stay positive is soooo not the way to support someone through loss or any other traumatic event.
They might also tell you, “You are strong. You will get through this.” Ignoring what someone is going through and turning away completely or turning the conversation to something positive and positively unrelated? Nope. When we are educated, we see right through this. Again, know that it is not you.
Check out this excellent four-minute video: “How do you help a grieving friend?”
I stood in a conversation with two family members only weeks after losing my younger sister where everyone agreed, “Well, at least you weren’t that close to her.”
I just stood there. Frozen. No response could escape me. We were not the closest of siblings due to some basics such as: five years difference in age, never attended the same schools, her 20+ year illness and being completely different people with totally different fundamental beliefs. But this doesn’t make one love another any less. My brother and I were also completely blocked out of a lot of attempts to connect with her by codependent family members needing to be in control as the martyrs, saviors and heroes throughout her illness. This also included projections and blame for not being present. A no-win situation that leaves a person blinded with confusion. All of these archetypes at play can make for very complicated family systems. But again, this is life. Most of us have complicated family systems.
Circling back and zooming out on the entire situation, we foster forgiveness.
The others were just trying to make the loss easier on themselves. The person closest to me even mentioned later on that he had finally gotten over his fear of death. While I was glad to hear this, I was simultaneously astonished and at a loss for words. I tried to remember, “It’s not about me.”
As Ram Dass says, “You wake up as you wake up.”
In those moments, I had to channel full Namaste-mode in order to let it go and move on. Still numb, still feeling like I was trying to run through quicksand, still trying to meet and exceed unrealistic expectations under what other family members deemed as “formidable conditions”. In all transparency, the numbness likely helped immensely in being non-reactive.
Know that it is not you.
The fine line we are attempting to walk is wondering when it should be about oneself, and when it should not be when experiencing loss and grief. Finding our way back to love and forgiveness is a tall task.
My only advice at this point is to speak with professionals. Find a few coming from different backgrounds working in different modalities. Do not give up until you find the right mix. Do not put up with any pressure from anyone regarding how long it should take to move through the grieving process and get life back on track. Heads up. It may take a lot longer than you, and of course, they, hope.
Do: Grieve deeply.
The responsibility of others, at minimum, is to gain an understanding about loss and grief. Google is right at our fingertips to find out anything one might need to know in a split second. Painfully obvious, but perhaps not at the time. Again, we try to remember that everyone is doing their best.
“Everyone grieves in their own time.”
The loss of an elder will always be significantly different than the loss of a lover or of a younger person. Even after experiencing losing several other people, this compounded loss was intense, different, and a lengthy recovery. One will never know or be able to relate unless it becomes part of their path, too. We can only hope those around us will eventually come around to understand that we, the people experiencing the loss, were doing the best we could, too.
If you’ve experienced loss and are seeking support, I’ve got you. If your significant other is experiencing loss and grief, give them a break – for a good long while. Acknowledgment, probably more than once, is the key ingredient. Know that it will take time. Perhaps more time than is convenient, fun or easy. It is what it is.