By Anna | Clay Counseling, PLLC
I sit across from people who are asking the deeper questions, of themselves, of their relationships, and of the world around them. This questioning is mingled with intense feelings, displayed as symptoms, that have brought them to my couch. One of these feelings, often incognito, is grief.
As therapists, we are quick to pathologize, quick to list symptoms and check boxes in search of an explanation, a diagnosis, clarity. In this process we often subliminally dehumanize and sterilize the very real and sticky experience in front of us. Sometimes, in the clinical process, we erase the complexity and lose a lot of the learning that still needs to be done. But that is a separate blog post.
The grief I didn't recognize
I've been thinking about grief lately. Not the grief we often associate with death, but the "quieter" griefs that we don't often identify, even when we are right in the middle of them. There was a time in college when I remember crying heavily and often, heaving on the floor in tears, totally wrecked after calls home. I remember wondering what was wrong, a bit bewildered by what gripped me. I reflect on it now and realize that I was grieving. Grieving growing up.
I couldn't identify it at the time. I only sat afterward, rather perplexed by my own experience. I'm grateful that I allowed myself the space to mourn. I didn't identify it because we don't often think of grief unless it's in the context of losing a person.
Endings all around us
I think grief is something we can experience in various moments and phases of our lives. It is characterized by being very bitter to the taste, a feeling we'd rather skim over quickly: an ending. The grief of a child moving out for the first time. The grief of realizing you've had your last baby. The grief of retirement. The grief of an aging body.
In all these moments, endings are occurring. Parts of our lives that we say goodbye to, forever. Of course we grieve. We have a hard time making space for this; maybe we are quick to become depressed and pathologize the pain. But I think instead, we ought to allow ourselves great tears and moments of mourning. Grief needs room to move. For some, that looks like tears; for others, it may look completely different.
Grief moves back and forth
Researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut describe grieving as a back-and-forth rather than a straight line. In their Dual Process Model, they observe that individuals often move between what's known as "loss-oriented coping" (feeling the sadness, missing what's gone, making sense of the loss) and "restoration-oriented coping" (handling daily things, transitioning to a new role, getting through regular day-to-day moments) [1].
Healthy grieving isn't about staying in the pain all the time, but it's also not about avoiding it. It's about the agility with which you can move between the two. Grief is heavy, and we are human; we can't cope with heavy all the time. We need breaks and reprieve. A loss can take up space and then be set down again.
Making room for the farewell
We may prefer to bury our grief. We may push it to the side with positive accolades and congratulations on what's ahead. We are good at making space for the new terrain but not the farewell.
Grief in motherhood might often look like a child reaching a new stage of development: kindergarten, walking, driving, graduating. Each beautiful milestone is also a goodbye, and it's okay to acknowledge the complexity of this feeling. There might also be grief in the parts of you that you've said goodbye to in each stage of your journey as a mother.
Grief isn't momentary. It may arrive for several weeks, leave, and then arrive again, unwelcome. It encircles life, hovers over it, if you will. We must let grief have its time. We must allow ourselves the space, time, and tears to say the goodbye, so that we can welcome what is new, what is ready and waiting for us on the other side.
You don't have to figure this out alone
At Clay Counseling in Cary, NC, I support women and parents through the many stages and quieter griefs of life. If any of this sounds familiar, I'd be glad to talk.
Sources
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197-224.