What is Grief?
“Grief is a price we pay for love” – Unknown
I read this quote in a book once and resonated with it straight away. Grief is exactly this – It is the price we pay for loving someone so deeply and dearly. But would you have it any other way?
Only those who have lost a loved one can fully appreciate and understand this deep feeling of loss and emptiness in life. It is a constant void which can never be replaced.
What does grief look like?
“Grief is a journey, not a destination”
Grief has no time limit as it becomes a part of life – A new life without our loved one. In time, we learn to live our lives around our grief
Grief is an intense feeling of many emotions. These include;
- Sadness
- Anger
- Guilt
- Jealousy
- Shock
- Disbelief and Denial
- Depression
- Confusion and Fear
- And much more
Dr R Wilson describes grief as a “Whirlpool of Grief”
From the river of life, when one is relatively serene, a shock arrives for the loss of a loved one. This shock throws us in a whirlpool, where we may initially feel numb or in denial. We go down the whirlpool and we experience the most painful ad devastating emotions. Like being in a waterfall. Then, one day, we see a river under the waterfall and, little by little, we learn how to row in it. As we are rowing, gradually, we are also reaching the acceptance stage of our grief towards the adaption to the new reality. We carry on rowing in this river, with the awareness that it is not the same river as before, but this is now the new river of our life.
“Bereavement is what happens to you
Grief is what you feel
Mourning is what you do” – Dr R Wilson