Putting together the pieces of the grief puzzle
Years ago someone said to me that it was such a pity that my dad wasn’t here to see the amazing healing work I was doing with grieving people. That he would have been so proud of me.
Very often people don’t put together the pieces of the puzzle.
You see, quite simply, had my dad been here I would never have been doing my healing grief work at all.
I wouldn’t have gone through the levels of grief that I did from his death and the 5 others in that 4 month period.
I wouldn’t have tried just about everything I could find to help me just to cope during such a difficult time.
I wouldn’t have been pushed to step outside the psychological model I was accustomed to to try totally new things, ways and methods that I’d never heard of…and that flew in the face of years of therapy.
I most certainly wouldn’t have healed – completely and permanently – from my grief.
And, clearly then, I wouldn’t have gone on to be able to help other people do the same.
I wouldn’t have learnt what I have about death and grief.
I wouldn’t do this work that I love so dearly.
Every thing, every person, every love, every loss, every joy, every trauma, has the potential to change our course. Our course, our direction, can adjust very quickly and obviously….or very slowly. You are like a cruise ship or a plane. Something may just change your course just 1 degree. You may not even notice it happening. But months or years later you are in a totally different place (and a totally different person) from where you were initially headed.
Death in your life has done this. So has your grief.
There are things you have today, people you know, places you’ve been, things about you that simply wouldn’t have been had it not been for that death in your life and the way it changed you.
An important part of healing is letting go of the story you’ve been telling and embracing the real story. The whole story. And the whole story includes the good, the important, the powerful ways that your life changed for the better from this death.
And don’t be fooled by common thinking that you honour someone only by seeing their death as terrible, tragic, wrong, and sad. When you can see how someone contributed incredibly to your life through not just what they did while alive, but even in their death too, then you truly honour them. And when you’ve healed from your grief completely, you honour them by loving them. Just loving them. Without the pain, the sadness, the regret. Just love.
Take all the pieces of the puzzle and see how they fit. And they do fit.
Acknowledge what good is in your life that wasn’t there before. Acknowledge how you have grown.
More recently a client, in a very natural place of resistance, told me that it was all very well for me talking about how death contributes to our life, changes it, grows it. That my life has very clearly been driven down a good path by my father’s death that has prompted the changes that led me to where I am today and the work that I am doing now. But that doesn’t apply to everyone.
But that is a new puzzle. These are the pieces we can see now. I wasn’t doing this work when I healed.
What she was missing here was that my dad died about 14 years ago. And I healed about 11 years ago. So I had already put together the puzzle then, long before I even thought about helping others with grief.
Even then I could see all the good, all the gifts that came from his death, from those deaths.
And, as she pointed out, I can also put together the pieces of the puzzle TODAY. And it’s a very different puzzle than the one I first put together 11 years ago. And will be a very different puzzle I imagine from the one I can put together in another 11 years.
After all, when your course changes, you continue to go to even more and more destinations that your original trajectory wouldn’t have taken you to.
You can put the pieces of the puzzle together anytime. And then put them together again and again.
The puzzle 11 years ago had a huge amount to do with growth, spirituality, community, family. The puzzle now is about the work I love to do, writing, travel, and my beautiful child.
And the one in another 11 years? We will have to wait and see.
Figure out your puzzle. Figure out where everything fits today for you because of this death. Do this and you’ve changed your story. And when your grief story changes so does your grief.
Kristie
xx
