Defining Grief: What Is This?

Grief is not a bad thing. It is often brought on by a life changing event in your life. If you are grieving because you are bereaved, it means you’ve lost a loved one who was special to you, who impacted your life, and who you’ve shared memories with from some point in your life. Grief is a normal response to a loved one’s death. As a healthy response to loss, you do not want to ignore it, push it to the side, or otherwise bury it, and you do not have to feel that your struggle is invalid.

Grieving Is About Changing

There are many reasons a person can grieve, even beyond death. Though the death of a loved one is one of the most common causes of grief, it is not the only reason one could feel this way. You may grieve when a relationship ends or when a divorce takes place. The loss of a job, changes in your financial security, and changes in your life can also be grief-inducing instances. No matter what has occurred, you have the ability to move forward in your life but first, you must allow yourself to grieve.

Why Is It Healthy?

Grieving is crucial beginning. It’s confronting a painful change that you cannot do anything about. For some people, it is about regret. For others, it is about a loss of time, a loss of companionship, or an unavoidable change in lifestyle. Life looks frightening ahead. When you grieve, you allow yourself to realize that you’ve lost something. We are forced to “pick up the pieces and put them back together again,” but you can’t because there are missing pieces. It is then we begin to look for the pieces to a new puzzle. As pieces of this new puzzle begin to fit together and a new picture emerges, embrace the work you’ve done. It’s a new puzzle, the pieces fit and the new image will guide you on how to move forward.

Grieving is not a specific process. Everyone experiences it in a different way. Some people grieve openly and painfully, while others, grieve quietly. In all cases, allowing oneself to grieve is the first step to a healthy grief recovery.