With all due respect to Charlie Brown, no grief is good grief.
Conjoined twins, Loss and Grief, are inevitabilities of human experience. Live long enough, and you will be visited by the pair many times over.
Like all other difficulties endured by humanity, we are charged with not only accepting loss and grief, but with learning to carry their shrouds well. To do so, we should have a plan—a grief plan, so to speak, a tool box from which we can borrow and use the proper instrument for the proper task. Without one, we run the risk of merely cycling through grief without ever actually experiencing it.
Look. I get it. It’s foolish to think people would ever actually want a Full Grief Experience, but when we fully acknowledge Grief, sit with her, and honor her various phases, we heal more deeply. Treating our grief as though it’s merely something to endure causes our pain to linger longer and closer to the bone than it should.
The rub of understanding our personal stages of grief is that it only comes after multiple experiences with loss. While unpleasant to live through, each loss teaches us to recognize helpful patterns, so by paying attention to what we feel and when we feel, we create a sort of navigation guide to future losses.
Simply saying “I will not feel sad today” or “I’ll try to not think of X today” do nothing to spur healing; rather, they are ways to simply anesthetize—to deaden—feeling, which only prolongs the work of repairing what is broken. I say feel what you need to feel. Grief serves a purpose in rounding out a human life, and negating its existence negates our own humanity.
Similarly, giving in to clichés or hackneyed expressions of grief denies us our individual experience of it. To resort to shallow expressions of grief is to say, “My grief is just like everyone else’s.” And it is not.
How do I know? Because when someone tells us about their grief in the midst of ours, we are rarely comforted. More often than not, we wonder, “When did this become about them?” Even Shakespeare1 realized that telling someone that their grief is “common” does nothing to assuage pain. Yes, obviously, life goes on and time will heal, but saying these things doesn’t confront the very real issue that life right now is not okay and that time hasn’t yet had its chance to work any magic.
Fully understanding that no two griefs are the same, there are tools I’ve come to rely on in times of loss. When my emotions begin flickering through their familiar shades of grief, I turn to my life-tested measures to pull me through.
The Primal Scream
When the vacuum inside threatens my very breath and everything vital is about to shatter, channeling that destructive energy and thrusting it back into the palpable universe with a life-affirming scream feels about as right as anything does.
One good howl laced with equal parts frustration, anguish, and rage works efficiently at refocusing the chaotic swirl of grief.
So often, modern life demands that we hold it together by putting on a brave face and keeping quiet. From what I can tell, this arrest of true feeling, in all its messy ugliness, only makes the pain worse. It’s like desperately needing a breath of air while simultaneously pushing yourself farther underwater and forcing your mouth tighter.
Stop holding your breath, already, and let it all out.
The Written Word
Sometimes the words are mine. Sometimes, they belong to others. In either iteration, words alleviate pain.
The act of naming my pain and finding the right words to express it relieves the pressure sitting squarely at my core and transfers it to the space between my ears. By wrestling and shaping the inchoate mass of feelings and images into somewhat coherent lines, I routinely find that I can tame the overwhelming nature of grief into something gentle. Also, thinking and writing is exhausting. Trust me, being wrung out is one of the best byproducts of writing.
When I have not (or cannot) yet process the hard things and every sentence I attempt is nothing but pure trash, the masters on my bookshelves provide solace. Whether I lose myself in the frivolity of a beach read, in the creepy fun of Stephen King, or the quiet wisdom of Marilynne Robinson, someone else’s vision of the world never fails to distract me from my own. Occasionally, I turn to a comfort read like Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret or Woman Hollering Creek, but I need to be at the tail end of my grief for these; otherwise, their (over)familiarity fails to distract me.
The Nap
Oh, glorious sleep. The answer to all things we don’t want to deal with—deadlines, hunger, boring TV shows, hangovers, sadness. The caveat with this tool is that it can be overused to the point of unhealthy avoidance.
Naps should be treated as rejuvenation and rest not a way to block out thinking or feeling. In the muzz and midst of grief, sleep replenishes my strength to face what feels otherwise unfaceable. It allows my overheated brain to cool and my heart to regulate its uneven beat.
In no way a cure-all, the nap cures some—and that is all I need.
The Walk
Often paired with The Nap (before or after, never simultaneously), The Walk makes me hyper-aware of my breathing quality (necessary when hurting). Long strides and a quick pace don’t allow for short, shallow breaths; furthermore, mouth-breathing makes everything hurt more, and when the body is already feeling punished, there’s no desire to add more pain. Learning to listen to your body and to use your nose for long, deep inhalations and exhalations gives order to the disordered time of grief.
When emotions start clouding thought, walking clears the mind. (No, really. Increased blood flow to the brain increases oxygen supplies up there and makes thinking sharper.) While I’m busy thinking, I take in my surroundings because being fully present is critical to staying alive. And, no matter how distraught I’ve ever been, I always want to stay alive. Keeping eyes and ears open for bitey critters and distracted drivers centers my attention like nothing else. It also grants me the privilege of seeing what I’d otherwise never notice: the tiny cotton tailed bunny trembling near the sidewalk; the baby buck nibbling in the morning sun; the ducks quacking overhead; the terrible musical taste my neighbors have.
All of this is to say that moving on foot in open spaces offers an opportunity for crystal clear perspective.
The Sad Playlist
I’m no stranger to emotional cutting, and nothing does it better or faster than the right blend of songs that press their lyrics right into my bruised and bloodied wounds.
Sad songs in the midst of grief function much like hair of the dog. It’s counterintuitive, I know, but overwhelming the system with ache is a surefire way to get relief from it. Leaning into the pain, summoning every hurt to the surface, and crying it out is exhausting and usually leads to something between numbness and calm. On some days, this is the best we can feel, and that’s okay.
The Upbeat Playlist
Sometimes, grief requires a certain amount of delusion—temporary, of course—to help us get through the day. Listening to songs that make us feel hopeful1, lighthearted2, wild3, or even angry4 (because that’s better than feeling sad) is another path through the darkness. If we can lose ourselves in 6 minutes and 29 seconds of danceable fun, that’s 6 minutes and 29 seconds that won’t be spent staring blankly into space.
******************
Even though there may never be “good” grief, there are ways to create better grief. It doesn’t always have to sit like a spiked stone in your tender heart. It doesn’t need to feel like an unknowable void that threatens to consume all light.
Open the door to Grief as though she is an old friend. Name her, listen to her, and try really hard to understand her. Then, respond accordingly. And remember, she is a battered version of what was once love, so treat her gently.
1 Claudius’ speech to Hamlet, Hamlet, Act I, s. 2, l. 90-121
2 “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John and “Stay Gentle” by Brandi Carlile
3 “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen and “Via con Me” by Paolo Conte
4 “Freedom! ‘90” by George Michael and “Raise Hell” by Brandi Carlile
5 “Right Through You” by Alanis Morissette and “Mean” by Taylor Swift
Introvert Therapy 