Mourning is Hard Work
The "Tasks of Mourning"--constructed by J. William Worden (1991). The following language, including the names for the tasks, is mine however.
Note: this is something I wrote 2 months ago and rediscovered this morning. I'm posting it mostly to preserve it, but it has relevance to my life for many personal reasons.
Name Your Grief. If we are to grieve successfully, we must acknowledge our loss. There is never a single loss; it exists within a constellation of relationships. With the loss of a person can also come the loss of hopes, and dreams, and the fragile belief that we know what our future will be.
Express Your Grief. Do not go gently unto the night. Go kicking and screaming. Vent and rage. Feel all that there is to be felt: relief that the bad times are over; guilt that you have felt relief; anger and resentment. Who are we mad at? We are mad at the one who left. We are mad at our circumstances. We are mad at God, the author of our current misery.
Learn and Become. When we grieve, we suffer loss. What have we lost? Not simply a loved one--but someone who played some role in our lives. Perhaps it was a role worth forgetting; perhaps it was a vital part of our daily living. To grieve is to learn new tasks, even to take on these roles if need be.
Invest. We have a surplus of energy now. The energy was first, dedicated towards another. Then, it was dedicated to healing and growth as we experience fully the sorrow of loss. Then, in time, we must learn that it is okay to take that energy and put it into other things and other relationships.
Believe again. We lose an entire worldview when we grieve. We can more easily learn new roles or invest energy into new people than we can reconstruct a shattered philosophy. Or is it in the act of re-investing and re-imagining our lives that we are in fact building a new philosophy, one that is more tested and tried by life's fire?
Note: this is something I wrote 2 months ago and rediscovered this morning. I'm posting it mostly to preserve it, but it has relevance to my life for many personal reasons.
Name Your Grief. If we are to grieve successfully, we must acknowledge our loss. There is never a single loss; it exists within a constellation of relationships. With the loss of a person can also come the loss of hopes, and dreams, and the fragile belief that we know what our future will be.
Express Your Grief. Do not go gently unto the night. Go kicking and screaming. Vent and rage. Feel all that there is to be felt: relief that the bad times are over; guilt that you have felt relief; anger and resentment. Who are we mad at? We are mad at the one who left. We are mad at our circumstances. We are mad at God, the author of our current misery.
Learn and Become. When we grieve, we suffer loss. What have we lost? Not simply a loved one--but someone who played some role in our lives. Perhaps it was a role worth forgetting; perhaps it was a vital part of our daily living. To grieve is to learn new tasks, even to take on these roles if need be.
Invest. We have a surplus of energy now. The energy was first, dedicated towards another. Then, it was dedicated to healing and growth as we experience fully the sorrow of loss. Then, in time, we must learn that it is okay to take that energy and put it into other things and other relationships.
Believe again. We lose an entire worldview when we grieve. We can more easily learn new roles or invest energy into new people than we can reconstruct a shattered philosophy. Or is it in the act of re-investing and re-imagining our lives that we are in fact building a new philosophy, one that is more tested and tried by life's fire?
posted by Peregrinato at 9/30/2004 11:15:00 am
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