Whether we like it or not, none of us are immortal. If you’re lucky, you may not have to face the loss of a loved one before your twenties. But the unfortunate truth is that most of us know what grief feels like.
I, myself have experienced the parting of a handful of beautiful souls, and let me tell you, it is never easy. The grieving process and the heartbreak you feel doesn’t get easier with each death. And unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to make the next loss any less painful or go by any quicker.
That said, there are a few things you can do to help yourself find the sanity you think you’ve lost or the hope you think you’ll never see again. Below are a few lessons I’ve learned about how to battle grief when you don’t feel like putting up a fight.
Accept Your Emotions
The first major step in being able to move forward during this time – and the best lesson I’ve learned – is that you have to understand and accept the emotions that you are feeling. If you don’t understand what you’re feeling and you’re just all over the place mentally, try your best to figure out what that emotion is. Even if it’s multiple at once, or even the feeling of being overwhelmed. Identifying and putting a name to what you are feeling helps you get a better grasp on reality – something vital in pulling yourself back up when you get to that point.
Understand the stages of grief
As some of you may already know, the five stages of grief are as follows: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While it’s good for you to learn what these are, unfortunately, they have been placed into this order causing people to think this is the order in which you will go through them, or that you will go through all of them. This is untrue. These stages will come at you in random orders and your process may even skip some of the stages completely. Understand that this is okay.
This is what you can expect from each of these stages:
Denial: frankly, the news of a loved one passing will feel fake. It will feel like it didn’t happen and that someone has to be lying to you. Most people think this stage lasts around a couple of hours when the news is fresh and you haven’t had time to sit on it. But in reality, denial can last a very long time. The length tends to vary depending on how you found out, how close you were to the person, how often you saw the person, etc. The longest amount of time I was in the stage of denial was around three months. This stage makes it easy for you to dismiss the fact that someone has passed away and causes you to act as if it didn’t happen. Do not do this. It will only make it harder for you and the grieving process will only last longer.
Anger: when you start feeling anger, this doesn’t mean that you, yourself, are angry and irritable. You will be angry at the situation. You will start trying to find something or someone to blame. If the person passing was a result of a system or a person, or anything failing them, like an ambulance not showing up soon enough, or if a person was actually responsible for the passing, all of the emotions you have will be directed at that.
Bargaining: when the news starts to settle, your mind will start trying to find ways you could have prevented the loss or ways you can prevent another one from happening. This may include you trying to offer yourself to a higher power or a religious figure you may believe in and tell them you will be a better person if it will make them stop taking people away from you. It can also include your mind trying to scramble for things you wish you could have done. Like, “What if I was there” or “If only I had done this.” It is important that you don’t fall too deep into those thoughts or else you will make the process harder on yourself.
Depression: this stage can come at any point, or even be present alongside the other stages. This is when the sadness and the pain really start to settle in and you are no longer pushing away the unfortunate fact that a loved one is gone. The realization that there is nothing you can do to bring them back will take you over. You will find it hard to do your normal tasks and if you can do them, it will feel like you are on autopilot.
Acceptance: while the other stages can vary in order, acceptance will almost always be the last. This is when you’ve run through every scenario of what you could have done differently, tried to pin the blame on anything you can think of, you’ve fallen into the sadness that a loss will bring and you finally understand that no matter what, your loved one is still gone. You know they are gone, you know that there is nothing you can do to bring them back and you know that stopping your life to grieve will only hurt you more.
Moving on does not equate to forgetting
Through all of this, it is very important that you understand that moving on from the grieving process does not mean that you have moved on from the person. It will feel as though grieving is the only way to remember them and you will feel guilty for enjoying the life you still have because they lost theirs. But no matter how cheesy this sounds, it couldn’t be more true: they would want you to be happy. They know that you haven’t forgotten them. They know that it still hurts you when you think about what happened. So don’t give yourself any more burdens than you already have.
If you are grieving right now, I hope this helps you realize that you will be able to move on from what you are feeling and that this information can help you identify exactly what it is you are going through.