Good Grief: Healing Through the Shadow of Loss by Deborah Morris Coryell help us delve further into the process of healing the pain of loss.

Grieving takes us to the very heart of life itself. Grieving takes us to love and to loss. We only grieve for that which we have loved and, the nature of life being transitory, love and loss are intimately connected. Not only are we all going to die,which we can see as loss of life or as a wave of transforming energy but every moment is changing and as it changes it brings loss.

Reading such passages as this I think is when I started to fear death less, realizing that it is all a process, and we are part of that process, a process from where there is no escape. It made life that more precious. It made each day a gift, and never to be wasted.

GOOD GRIEF is when we accept the reality of life. GOOD GRIEF allows us to be less vulnerable and less afraid to connect with others. Bad grief or not doing grief work may cause us to be more guarded as well as less able to connect with others.

In the first pages of this book we first go into the meaning of lost. And into that part of the task of grieving, which is to find our place in the world again. A task I was forced to take during a time when I had looked forward to retirement with my husband. It was a process that one therapist would call individuating. Becoming one when for so many years I was part of another.

Lost as the author tells us, our first reaction to loss is visceral and convulsive. This is correct. She speaks about shiva, a practice among observant Jews, known as sitting shiva after the death of a family member. This has one sitting still for seven days. And this begins a yearlong cycle of grieving. I only wish I had done something to that effect, instead that first week after my husband died I kept going, not wanting to sit still for any length of time, not wanting to think of where my life was going or what it was going to be like from that point on. Only that I needed to get through each and every minute, hour, day, week without him there. Shiva allows us to make a space for our lost selves. I think I am still trying to find that space here now in an ordinary world, where mine has not become quite as ordinary.

The chapters in this book are not numbered, which I found interesting. They simply move from one to the next, as one does while grieving. The next one speaks of CORE GRIEF where as the author tells us grief is the container for all our emotions. She believes we are all born with this core grief that it is there inside of us. That we are born with the knowledge of our own mortality, at a cellular level, and it reminds us that cells die from the moment of birth.

We move into the next chapter which tells us interestingly enough that TIME DOES NOT HEAL ALL WOUNDS. For those who believe this happens have not yet experience a major loss, because wounds remain, but over time their pain softens. This I was told in my first bereavement session, that the pain will soften, and after a time I found that to be true. But it truly never goes away, and to believe otherwise is merely denying that fact. Time does pass as the author tells us. It does not heal. Healing is an active process. As I found, healing requires doing the work. I have known people who did not do the work, and years later whatever major loss they have suffered in the past still affects their lives in such ways that can actually interfere with their ability to connect and to love.

I have seen people walk this earth with what the author refers to as a weeping wound where emotions that have not been processed are locked inside and in their own way can cause their own emotional, mental, and physical chaos.

In the next chapter DAILY PRACTICE it is suggested that we think of our losses, or what our losses can be, and not push them into some background part of our mind. In the everyday practice of life we become stronger by acknowledging the fact that we do not truly control what happens to us and that yes bad things can and do happen to good people. It is a form of conditioning, making us stronger that by accepting the fact tragedies will happen, when one does, we are better able to cope.

Only he who suffers can be the guide and healer of the suffering, a quote from Thomas Mann and that I found in the chapter entitled BEARING THE BURDEN. Also, it is interesting to note that the words grieve and grief come from a French word meaning to bear a heavy burden. Grieving then is doing just that, whether we do it for ourselves or for another, we bear a burden, carry the pain of loss. And we find at times this is not an easy thing to do over a period of time as those will agree with the disappearance of some family members and friends, who feel after the first months, we should get on with our life. We do, eventually, but at the same time, we also continue to carry that burden, we continue to grieve.

Again, we move on into the next chapter entitled THE ART OF LOSING again reminding us that as we live our lives, we continue to incur these losses. Living is losing. Life is all about letting go. If we cannot let go well, then we cannot live well. Only when I was able to let go of what I had, and release all the shoulds and coulds and what ifs did I find myself moving forward into a new life realizing that even what I have now it temporary, that everything is temporal. It suddenly made the words Its All Small Stuff much more applicable. It allowed me to live in the moment, not worry about the future, because then I would hear God chuckling. Yes, we plan, but then we all need that ability to adapt to changes when plans fall by the wayside. When we find ourselves forced into making other plans we had no intention of making.

Then we breathe, which is the next chapter, simply labeled BREATH. Someone once wrote that losing her husband was like being hit hard in the stomach with a baseball bat and never able to fully breathe again. That is true. After a terrible loss we need to learn how to breathe again. As the author tells us, Life begins with our first breath, life ends with our last. Taking the time to breathe allows us to stay in the present.

And as the next chapter tells us, SIMPLE PRESENCE OPEN HEART Since becoming a widow I have met others both men and women, who after suffering a loss whether through death or divorce no longer truly connect. Unwilling to suffer the pain through another loss, they close themselves off. The author suggests that we stay open to the possibility that the loss has happened for us and not to us, then it does not need to be a punishment. We do not need to suffer in such a way to the point that we do not allow or more so do not allow ourselves to connect or love again.

And there is SHADOW WORK where what we try to avoid, not know, or disown can create its own chaos inside us. Shadows loom large, and unless explored we will never reveal its identity, its source, yet by doing so may come to realize it is not as bad as we thought. I want to share a poem the author shares with us, written by an eighteen year old woman, a poet, hit by a car while jogging and killed.

ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH

I saw death the other day
I had a meeting with it at 9:00, at its office downtown.
There were a few questions I needed to ask.
I was expecting to see a dark shadow with sharp teeth and claws.
But, when I got there I was met by a kind, old woman.
She smiled at me and brought me to her office.
It was like she could read my thoughts because right away she said, So you want to know about the other side.
Yes, I replied, please tell me about it. I listened eagerly.
Well its not what it seems, as you have probably already noticed, she said calmly.
Death is not evil with devils, nor kind with angels.
It is simply me taking you in so you can fight through another life much like you do now.
So I smiled and said, Death really is not so bad after all.
So what if I die?
Everyones greatest fear is death, but not for me anymore.
Now I can live my life free, free from the fear of death.
I guess coming face to face with your fear and talking it out really does pay off.
As I got up to leave, I said, Thank you, Mrs. Death, and I am sorry, but I cannot stay any longer. I now have an appointment with guilt.

Stacy the young girl who wrote this poem was twelve when she wrote it.

The next chapter entitled IMAGINE reminds us that we do just that, we imagine, that our imaginations can create our worlds. If someone tells us it is all in the imagination, we should agree, because essentially it is in our heads, yet that fact should not be invalidated.

Sometimes we find gold nuggets in these little books, and one that I found was the quoted line from the Chinese BOOK OF COURAGE which tells us The forest grows more green after a fire. Tragedy does inspire growth. I have been told by others that I have become stronger, more independent, able to face whatever comes around that next corner. I have found that by facing these things head on, going through the pain, not avoiding it helps. The fire that destroyed my life, in its place a new life has grown, and I think has grown back greener in some areas.

There are more chapters ahead, each one bringing us to another place, into another part of the healing process. This is what GOOD GRIEF is all about. Forging ahead, doing the work, feeling the pain, and allowing it to heal. Becoming whole again in the process, yet never the same. We are always made different by our losses.




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