The Grief Recovery Method
“Don’t feel bad!” “Replace the loss.”
My clients consistently tell me how relieving it is to be supported by a specialist guide who gets it! Someone who understands the pain, isolation, and loneliness caused by a significant loss of any kind.
When our heart is broken, others who genuinely care simply don’t know what to say. They make comments which are intellectual: “Don’t feel bad that your girlfriend left you; she wasn’t good enough for you! I have a friend who is a dating coach. She has great ladies for you to meet!” This is an attempt to get you to replace the loss. The fact is that your heart is broken, and you simply feel numb inside. The last thing on your mind is another relationship…
Your loved teen or adult daughter just overdosed. A friend, not knowing how to respond to such an unspeakable loss, says: “I’m so very sorry for your loss… Thank goodness you have Jeanie (your youngest daughter).”
You are speechless. Sometimes others don’t know what to say… Yes, this comment is intellectually true. It is also emotionally vacant.
“Just give it time.”
Your fiancé just broke your engagement, and you can’t eat or sleep. At work, you can barely focus. A close friend says, “I’m sorry that jerk left you. Just take it easy. In time, you will feel brand new.”
What?! People in our lives sometimes do not know what words to use at life-changing moments. They might have had parents who needed them to still their tears and grieve alone. They don’t know how to gently respond to our tears, because they never learned how to be present in another’s pain.
It is our heart that is broken, not our brain! Time alone cannot heal us; it is the action within time which heals our hearts!
Grievers do not need to be fixed. They do need to be heard with dignity and respect.
Undelivered communication…
Unresolved grief is almost always about undelivered communication of an emotional nature. A host of emotions are needing expression: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, relief, and compassion.
We don’t need to analyze these feelings. We simply need to learn how to effectively communicate them, so we can begin to live joyfully in the present.
The emotions: Lana’s story*
Lana had been happily bonded to her husband, Greg, for 40 years. They met in Med School, built a psychiatry practice together, and then generously gave back to their local West Virginia community in a non-profit.
Together Lana and Greg became city leaders. They were loved by friends, family, and their community.
One day Greg began to forget words. Then sentences. He was only 60 when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Lana was beyond devastated.
Her late father had died from this horrid disease with a slow decline only a decade earlier. Lana lost precious hopes, dreams, and expectations of all she wanted to share with Greg in their later years… Paris, Africa, trips with their children and grandchildren.
Slowly and ever so painfully, Lana witnessed hopelessly as Greg began to enter his own distant world. When she could no longer care for Greg at home, Lana placed him in a small and caring local home with only five other patients.
Her heart was broken; and as time continued with each visit, Greg began to lose sight of who she was… Greg called Lana by their niece’s name. Life became a living nightmare. Lana felt emotionally numb.
Greg died at age 67.
Lana, albeit emotionally and physically worn, was still healthy and youthful at 62. She had a friend, Joy, whose husband had died the year prior and recommended that Lana speak with the Grief Recovery Specialist whose emotional recovery program had been so uplifting and healing for Joy. Joy told Lana that the program had restored her hope.
That Specialist was me.
I consulted with Lana. When we talked about how she was faring, Lana said: “I feel as though I cannot get enough oxygen to breathe… as if the emotional wind has completely been harshly knocked out of me.”
Lana wondered how she would survive Greg’s loss; the emotional pain was so overwhelming for her each hour. She knew that her friends and surely her family only wanted to support her; however, she didn’t even know how to barely drag herself out of her bed each morning – let alone make any attempt to be social with anyone.
Friends mean well…
Sometimes Lana’s friends would say: “Lana, don’t feel bad. Greg never wanted to live in this state! He’s in a better place now.” Lana would wince inside. She did feel bad. She felt an unspeakable loss with Greg’s absence day-to-day. In every hour.
Other friends would say: “Lana, just stay busy with the non-profit. You are so loved and appreciated there. Just give it time!”
Lana knew others were simply trying to help with their intellectual comments. She knew they just didn’t know what to say to her. Her heart was shattered.
An emotional Sherpa solution to loss
In the Grief Recovery Method, one of the definitions of grief is, “Reaching out for someone who has always been there only to find when you need him one more time, he is no longer there.”
My intention and honor are to serve as your emotional Sherpa. To light the way ahead with compassion via my own lifelong experience of inordinate loss. You will be surrounded by the faith that you are not alone on this healing journey.
The Grief Recovery Method is an action-based program with empowered action steps for beginning to restore joy and hope after loss. Grief is a normal and natural reaction to loss and change. Amidst the loss of a loved one, having your conflicting mass of emotions normalized can feel like a gift.
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Lana: An uplifting epilogue
It was my honor to guide Lana through her loss of Greg with the Grief Recovery Method. In our Alumni program, Lana chose to work with me about two other significant relationships from her past which needed my emotional support. Two years later Lana states that her heart feels light, and she is full of hope for her future.
*Names changed to protect client confidentiality.