Alan D Wolfelt - Grief day by day: simple, everyday practices to help yourself survive--and thrive

ALSO BY ALAN D. WOLFELT, PH.D.

Grief One Day at a Time:
365 Meditations to Help You Heal After Loss

The Journey Through Grief:
Reflections on Healing

Healing Your Grieving Soul:
100 Spiritual Practices for Mourners

Understanding Your Grief:
Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart

One Mindful Day at a Time:
365 Meditations for Living in the Now

Companion Press is dedicated to the education and support of both the bereaved and bereavement caregivers. We believe that those who companion the bereaved by walking with them as they journey in grief have a wondrous opportunity: to help others embrace and grow through griefand to lead fuller, more deeply-lived lives themselves because of this important ministry.

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The Center for Loss and Life Transition

3735 Broken Bow Road | Fort Collins, CO 80526

(970) 226-6050 | www.centerforloss.com

2018 by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

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Companion Press is an imprint of the Center for Loss and Life Transition, 3735 Broken Bow Road, Fort Collins, Colorado 80526.

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ISBN: 978-1-61722-268-9

In gratitude to my father, Donald Wolfelt. He taught me early in life that when words are inadequate, use everyday rituals.

Welcome to Grief Day by Day.

While I want to welcome you, I also understand that you are hurting. I know you would rather not be in grief. Yet Im glad youre herebecause even in your time of darkness, I have hopeful news and helpful ideas to share.

Ive been a grief counselor for a long time nowmore than forty years, in factand Ive written a number of what I hope are compassionate books on healing in grief. But in this little book, for the first time, Ill be spotlighting a secret of sorts. Its a revelation that will help you feel better right nowas well as live better in the months and years to come.

But before I unveil the secret, lets review a few important foundational principles that will help prepare you for our discussion to come.

1. First, grief, which is our internal experience of loss, is normal and necessary. Grief is what we think and feel on the inside after someone we love dies or we lose something important to us. For the most part, grief happens automatically because its a form of love. Grief is loves conjoined twin; we dont get one without the other. And because love is what gives our lives meaning, we must also embrace and express our natural grief.

2. Second, mourning, which is the outward expression of our grief, is what helps our grief heal. When we talk about our thoughts and feelingsor journal them or paint them or cry them out or any number of other mourning activities and behaviorswere moving them from the inside to the outside, and in doing so, were giving them motion. Emotions in motion are able to flow with our ongoing lives. Emotions in motion help our grief start to soften and heal.

3. And third, our grief affects us not only emotionally but also physically, cognitively, socially, and spiritually. Our grief permeates all facets of our selves, so when we do our work of mourning, its essential that we find ways to mourn that give voice to all of these different parts of who we are. The spiritual realm is particularly important.

In my writings and presentations, I often talk about grief as a journey. Its a difficult, painful trek, and one that has no timetable and no final destination, because grief never totally ends. Instead, as we mourn and give our grief motion, bit by bit, over time, we learn to accommodate it as part of who we are. We integrate it into our lives. When it is fully integrated, we find that we are reconciled to it. It is an inextricable, ever-present part of who we are, yet we also find that we are invested in continuing our lives forward with meaning and purpose.

In the wilderness of grief, most of us meander back and forth, around and around. Were a bit lost, and were wandering. Thats a natural and fine way to go because grief, like love, is mysterious and not entirely understandable. Its also recursive. That means it loops and doubles back on itself. We may find ourselves recovering the same ground, sometimes over and over and over again. Still, as long as were embracing and expressing our authentic, unique grief, were movingand ever so slowly, we are healing.

Picture if you will the birds-eye view of the circuitous paths we often find ourselves on in grief. They look something like this:

But!

But what if instead of wandering aimlessly in the wilderness of our grief, we could move as the crow flies? What if there were a more direct, really effective, supercharged route to healing in grief?

I think there is.

In all my many years as a grief counselor and educator, I have been privileged to companion thousands of grieving people. I consider this work both an honor and a calling. But despite my schooling and experience, I am not the expert. It is the grievers themselves who are the experts. After all, they are the only ones who can teach me what their unique grief is like for them. My main responsibilities are to listen, learn, and empathizeand, in my teaching and authoring roles, to share their lessons of hope and healing with others.

As I progressed in my career and understanding, the more love and grief stories I listened to and learned from, the more I became aware of some quiet patterns. These patterns are important because they can help grievers like you embrace your grief and find your way to reconciliation.

One of those patterns was something Ive already mentioned: that mourning, or the outward expression of grief, helps people heal. I saw that those who were more open and authentic in their grief and mourningin ways that suited their unique personalities and needswere more likely to work their way to renewed meaning and purpose in their continuing lives.

Another pattern I noticed was the converse of open, authentic mourning: a lot of people carry their grief instead of mourning it.

We humans have the capacity to keep our thoughts and feelings inside of us, and pretend, on the outside, that nothing is amiss. (Some people even have the capacity to barely acknowledge their own grief inside themselves.) If we grieve but never mourn after a significant loss, we end up carrying our grief, often for years and decades. And carried, or unacknowledged, grief creates insidious symptoms, such as ongoing anxiety, depression, and problems with intimacy. I call it living in the shadows of the ghosts of grief because it causes people to die inside while they are still alive.