I have learned that everything leads back to grief and loss. If you are experiencing panic attacks, depression, anxiety, difficulty managing relationships, and (insert struggle), there is grief and loss underneath all those feelings and journeys.

I have been a griever my entire life. I believed at one time that my first significant loss was my son, Will. Will died during his second liver transplant at 19 months old. The grief of my child dying was unimaginable. There were countless days where all I could do was get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other. I took it day by day, sometimes hour by hour. I believed that it was the journey that I could not survive, and yet I did. I have not only survived but I also know great joy in my life. I can hold joy along with the pain of losing Will’s physical presence in my life. Both things can be true.

How did I learn to manage my grief? By feeling it, by sitting in the horrible discomfort of the pain, by walking through it, by sharing it with people, by honoring him in ways that have created meaning in my life. I worked with a therapist, I attended a support group for parents grieving a child, I let my friends and loved ones buoy me through this unthinkable journey.

Grieving Will was not my first loss, my first loss was as a baby growing inside my birth mother’s womb. A baby who experienced trauma and violence before birth. Later as a newborn, who was relinquished by her birth parents and given a healthier life through adoption. Adoption is one of the great gifts of my life and a significant journey of grief and loss. I have had many other losses and journeys requiring me to grieve so that I can heal.

Here are a few examples of grief journeys:

Death
Abuse and Trauma – the loss of safety and security
Estrangement
Transitions

Divorce
Moves
Job changes
Graduations
Empty Nest
Retirement

Illness and Disability
Friendships
Natural Disasters

The list goes on and on. As a Grief Informed Therapist, I see things through the lens of grief and loss. I help my clients heal by encouraging them to acknowledge and feel their grief, pain, hurt, disappointments, confusion and so on. We heal by feeling it in our bodies, by allowing all the emotions, and by acknowledging how grief and loss show up in our lives.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross gave us the 5 Stages of Dying. They are frequently confused with the 5 Stages of Grief. They are not the same thing. We experience a great deal of feelings, not stages, on our grief journeys. We will experience anger, depression, sadness, anxiety, confusion, overwhelm, exhaustion and many other feelings. A significant part of healing is feeling all the feelings, both in our bodies and in our souls.

In the throes of grief, we think that something is wrong with us. Sadly, society or well-intentioned loved ones will encourage us, “To get over it.” It is not something to “get over”, instead it is something to honor, to feel, to share, and at some point, to learn and choose to accept, at least to accept most of the time.

Grief is surreal. I remember leaving the hospital after my son died and seeing people going about their daily lives. I remember thinking, how can people be going to the grocery store, my son died. My world had halted, but their world kept moving on.

When I work with clients, we look at the good, the bad, the ugly and the lovely. All these components are important in healing. I worked closely for years with a woman who had experienced significant abuse and sexual trauma in her childhood home. Her healing journey consisted of honoring the trauma and the grief of her childhood. She grieved the fact that she did not have anyone to talk to, no one who felt safe to hear her pain. The isolation and aloneness deserved to be grieved, the loss of innocence deserved to be grieved, the loss of feeling safe and loved deserved to be grieved. With the use of both trauma informed and grief informed therapies she began to process her trauma and losses at a deeper level. She slowly allowed herself to be vulnerable with a few chosen people, she did the work to heal her shame, allowing her to see herself differently. She learned self-compassion and spoke to herself differently. She practiced self-care by setting boundaries. She learned to acknowledge her pain rather than minimize it. She gave it a voice. Her grief and trauma still flare up at times and she knows how to manage it.

Grief is a gut punch. It is exhausting. It can breed hopelessness. Allow us at NCTP to hold that Hope for you, to walk alongside you on your grief journeys.

As hard as grief work is, there is so much life and hope in doing the work.

The Journeys of Our Lives