Myths and reality
You have probably heard plenty of platitudes since your person died. Whilst often well meaning, these platitudes are unhelpful and create misconceptions and myths about grief which can leave people who are grieving feeling confused and misunderstood. It helps to explore why these are myths and explore the reality of grief.
Myth 1: ‘You need to move through the stages of grief’.
Reality: Grief is not neat and linear. We don’t move through grief as if we go from one stop to the next. Grief is not predictable or orderly. Grief will evolve and change over time.
Myth 2: ‘You need to move on’. and ‘You should be over this now’.
Reality: Grief doesn’t follow a set timeline. There is no normal time limit when grief is supposed to be finished.
Myth 3: ‘Time heals all wounds’.
Reality: While the passing of time can diminish the intensity and frequency of grief, certain occasions or times of the year such as anniversaries can reopen emotional wounds. Grief can come and go over the course of a lifetime.
Myth 4: ‘You should have a good cry. If you are not crying, you are not really grieving’.
Reality: Crying and exploring emotions is only one way to express grief. A lack of tears does not mean someone isn’t grieving. They may instead experience other feelings like anger, fear, relief or numbness. Additionally, some people are more thinkers than feelers and may express grief in more physical, cognitive or behavioural ways.
Myth 5: ‘Talking about it will make the grief worse’.
Reality: For many people remembering the person and being able to talk about them can bring a source of comfort.
Myth 6: ‘Pull yourself together and be strong’.
Reality: Grieving is not a sign of weakness. It is a normal response to the loss of someone you love.
This brief video exploring the Tonkins Model of Grief, explains how grief changes over time.
As we adapt to all the changes, grief settles down and finds a place in our life. It’s in the background and stops dominating and disrupting our lives.
A lived experience of grief
The following description of grief from an anonymous post on a Reddit forum describes the experience of grief following the death of their friend.
As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
Unknown, Reddit