Ashley Davis Bush - Hope & Healing for Transcending Loss: Daily Meditations for Those Who Are Grieving

Other Titles by
Ashley Davis Bush, LICSW

Transcending Loss

Understanding the Lifelong Impact of Grief and How to Make It Meaningful

Claim Your Inner Grown-Up

4 Essential Steps to Authentic Adulthood

Shortcuts to Inner Peace

70 Simple Paths to Everyday Serenity

75 Habits for a Happy Marriage

Marriage Advice to Recharge and Reconnect Every Day

Simple Self-Care for Therapists

Restorative Practices to Weave Through Your Workday

This edition first published in 2016 by Conari Press, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2016 by Ashley Davis Bush

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-667-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover photograph Slivsarenko Luliia/Shutterstock

Interior by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Typeset in Bernhard Modern with Museo Sans and PTIL Liberty Foundry

Printed in Canada

MAR

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To all those in emotional pain, may this book be a light in the darkness

Death doesn't end the relationship; it simply forges a new type of relationshipone based not on physical presence but on memory, spirit, and love...

ASHLEY DAVIS BUSH, Transcending Loss

I was twenty-five when I sat in my first sessionmy first session, that is, in which I was the therapist. With only a month of social work schooling under my belt, I was assigned to my first client, Joan.

It might have been a bewildering encounter given my inexperience, but instead it was transformative. Joan was a middle-aged woman assigned to me for grief counseling. Her beloved sister had been murdered by a handyman in their own home.

I sat with Joan through her tears and I listened. I asked questions. I listened some more. I allowed myself to be touched by her sorrow, and I provided a container for her pain. When I presented this case to my fledgling colleagues, they said, Oh, how can you work with her? Her story is so depressing.

And yet, curiously, I felt at ease with Joan and her deep sorrow. During our first session together, there was a click of recognition that I was being called to work with the bereaved. And so, for the last twenty-five years, I have done just that.

I have sat with countless widows and widowers, from young to old. I have offered tissues to bereaved parents in their inconsolable grief. I have normalized, educated, listened to, and championed grievers who felt tremendous pain and still chose life.

In fact, I became so immersed in this calling that I studied the grieving process and wrote a book about itTranscending Loss. In the decades since its publication, the grieving process has not changed: Grief is painful and needs to be felt just as love is eternal and needs to be celebrated.

However, with the rise of the Internet, a new dawn has arrived in which grievers have many more options for sharing their grief and connecting to others. This has been an exciting development, because grievers can now bond with other grievers around the world in therapeutic ways.

In 2009, I began the Facebook forum Transcending Loss as a way to reach out to those who grieve. The forum featured short, daily reflections as a starting point for grievers from around the world to share their stories and comfort each other. In just a few years, the forum grew from several hundred participants to over twenty-five thousand. This book rose out of that experience. I became keenly aware that short, daily words of hope and comfort make a real difference to people on the grief journey.

As I continue to interact with grievers from around the world, I am again reminded of the universality of grief. And although each journey is unique, there are many common experiences.

As you read through the year, you will encounter recurring themes that reflect the seven essential lessons of loss:

1. Grief is a normal reaction. Grief is the natural emotional and physical response to the death of a loved one. Although our society desperately wants to avoid the messiness of deep sorrow, there is no way out except through the pain. Typical numbing techniques such as medications, alcohol, and food are only temporary distractions to dull the pain.

   Letting ourselves grieve by going directly into the painin manageable doses over a long period of timeis healing. Avoiding the pain simply forces it to go deep into the heart, where it subtly affects emotional and physical health.

2. Grief is hard work. Grief isn't easy and it isn't pretty. It involves tears, sleepless nights, pain, sorrow, and a heartache that knocks you to your knees. It can be hard to concentrate, hard to think clearly, hard to read, and easy to forget all the details of life that everyone else seems to remember. Grievers frequently feel that they're going crazy, and they sometimes wish to die. This doesn't mean that they're actively suicidal; it just means that they're grieving.
3. Grief doesn't offer closure. Closure is an idea that we like because we want to tie up our emotional messes with a bow and put them in the back of a closet. But grief refuses to play this game. Grief tends toward healing, not closure. In other words, the funeral can be healing. Visiting a gravesite can be healing. Performing rituals, writing in journals, making pilgrimages to special sitesall of these things can be personally meaningful and healing, but they will not bring closure. Closure is relevant to business deals but not to the human heart.
4. Grief is lifelong. Although we all want quick fixes and short-term solutions, grief won't accommodate us. Many people want grief to be over in a few weeks or a few months, and certainly within a year. And yet, many grievers know that the second year is actually harder than the first. Why? Because the shock has worn off and the reality of the pain has truly sunk in.

   I let grievers know that the impact of grief is lifelong just as the influence of love is also lifelong. No matter how many years go by, there will be occasional days when grief bursts through with a certain rawness. There will be days, even a decade later, when sadness crosses over you like a storm cloud. And likely, every day going forward will involve some memory, some connection to missing your beloved.