Authentic Grief: Finding Meaning In Your After

In this series of podcasts we want to address the topic of grief. Grief is something we all experience so we want to take an authentic look at this shared experience.

David Kessler wrote a book as a 6th stage of grieving titled Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief.

We will be recording this podcast series as an overview to this book and be inviting you to a conversation about grief and how we can approach it through meaning. 

What is Grief?

Grief is the response to the loss of something deemed important or essential, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond or affection has been formed.

Chapter #4 The First Step in Finding Meaning:

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus pg. 67

On retreats on day #1 – write a letter to your past.  Day #2 write a letter to your future self.  It starts with a blank piece of paper but your future isn’t written yet. You are the writer. Not your past, not your losses, not death. But you are the creator of your future… Don’t let your past dictate your future. Pg 70

The story you tell yourself repeatedly becomes your meaning.  Pg 71

Original Meaning  Transformed vs. New Meaning:

The death happened to me. vs. Death happens.

I’m a victim. vs. I am a victor because I have survived a loss.

This death was a punishment. vs. Death is usually random.

Why did this happen to me? vs. Everyone gets something this lifetime. 

It happened because of something vs. There was nothing I could have done.

My story is the saddest one vs. My story had very sad parts.

Your life will never be the same but happiness again is still possible. Never being happy again is a statement about the future and no one can predict the future. All they can know for sure is that they are unhappy today. It helps to say, “I’m unhappy today.” and leave it at that. Pg 72

Whatever thoughts you water are thoughts that will grow. Pg 73

Perhaps it is time to put down the mirror and pick up the binoculars. (Telescope, microscope) * MVVP book reference 

I look at the meaning the person is giving the event and then I help them change the meaning, not the event. The event is not going to be any different, but the meaning can be, and this can help them to deal with the loss. Pg 76

The reality is that no two people will ever react to an event in the same way.  How you respond will depend upon the meaning you see in it. And like all perceptions of meaning, this will be influenced not just by the event itself, but also by your cultural background, your family, religion, temperament and life experience. Meaning comes from all that has made you who you are. Pg 77

Where is your loved on now?  Is a good question but also “When are they?” They are no longer in the moment. They are past suffering pg. 77

Allowing yourself only to focus on the past, however miserably, can seem easier, more comfortable, than deciding to live fully in the world without your loved one. Pg 79

Underneath the reluctance to live or love again is fear. Pg 79

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for” John A. Shield.

When we are grieving, we want to stay in the harbor. It’s a good place to be for a while. It’s where we refuel, rebuild and repair. But we are meant to find new adventures… Pg 80

As the Buddha says, “if you are a lamp for someone else, it will brighten your path.”

The parable of the long spoons:

A person is ushered into a banquet hall There are rows of tables laden with platters of sumptuous food, but the people seated around the tables are pale and emaciated, moaning in hunger. As he gets closer, he sees that each person is holding a spoon. But the spoon is so long he can’t get the food to his mouth. Everyone is starving in agony.

The person is then taken to another banqueting area where he encounters the same feasting  arrangement he encountered in the first hall. There is again a cornucopia of food but here the people seated at the tables are cheerfully talking and eating because the long spoons are being used to feed each other.

Taking the challenges, impairments and predicaments that we have been given (the long spoons of our lives) and using them to help others can really give meaning to those challenges, impairments and predicaments and can help nourish and nurture others while we receive the same for ourselves

Chapter #5 The Decision

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?  

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver Pg 83

Not making a decision is a decision. Healing does not allow for neutrality. It’s an active process, not a passive one. 

We have to participate in our own healing not just expect it to happen. 

Living is different from being alive.  Pg 83

The decision to live fully is about being present for life, no matter how hard life is at the moment. It’s about what you are made of, not what happens to you. Pg 84

C.S Lewis said in his book The Problem with Pain, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

Make a conscious decision to live, not just be alive. Pg 85

When an elephant grows up, it’ll clearly be strong enough to break the rope, but because by then it has learned that struggling is useless, and it will no longer attempt to pull up the small peg or break the rope. Pg 88

“Till death do us part” The marriage contract ends at death. It is done. No one’s vow includes the afterlife. Pg 90

Sometimes we need help making the decision to say our goodbyes to them in life and move our loved ones into our hearts in death. Pg 92

No matter how long you were together, it’s not enough time but the love you shared is not gone. It lives within you as a part of you. The experience of love that you had can never be destroyed or changed by a new love. That love will exist forever in its own time, in its own way in your heart. But more love can be available to you if you desire. Your heart can have many loves in its lifetime.  A new love can grow out of the same soil without diminishing a past love. You still have life.  Pg 94

At times, our challenge is a new love; other times it is a new life. Pg 94

We often don’t realize that the decision to live is an active one that requires our participation.  Pg 95

We are capable of more love throughout our life than we realize. “95 Make the decision to do so

Broken crayons still color.  Pg 96  

Part II  The Challenges in Grieving 

Chapter #6 Finding Meaning in Why

New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings. Lao-tzu Pg 99

You woke up for a reason this morning, and that reason is for the purpose of finding meaning in your life. P102

Small moments can have big meaning.

Everything you do has the potential for meaning.  P103

We affect others in ways we will never know, often by simply being ourselves. Pg104

Whatever the reason, when there’s guilt, there’s a demand for punishment, so survivors will often punish themselves or attract people who will do it for them. Pg 104

You will always be connected to your son but you don’t have to be connected to the pain. You can connect in love. Pg 107

When we don’t have a why we tend to jump in and play God. We tell ourselves, “ I could have prevented his death,” or “It should have been me.” This means we are attributing to ourselves the power that we don’t have. Pg. 108

To begin to heal you must give the power back to God, the universe, fate, or whatever you believe in. That might mean you begin to acknowledge your anger at God. I believe God is big enough to handle your anger and rage. Pg 109

The why you must answer is not why your loved one died, but why you lived. Why are you here? 

Turn the why into how or what. How can I move on from here? What meaning can I find for living?

Why’s build walls and we can bump into the wall time and time again and not have the answer to the why. As a matter of fact it can even seems that every time we ask why we put another brick on the wall..  If that is the case change the question to how. Where why questions build walls how questions build bridges. How can I move on from here? If I give up answering the why I can then accept the way things are in the present and move on from there. The how question helps me to move on. How can I move on from here even if I don’t know the why. 

The life that was lost was precious. If we have been granted more time, shouldn’t we believe that our life is also precious? Pg111