Grief Series:  The Universal Human Experience

Article 2

by Lori Kayser, created with her head and heart, no AI

“The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.”  ~C.S. Lewis on Grief

First, thank you to those who responded with the most heartfelt sentiments to the first article. It’s clear from your comments that help and support is desperately needed on how to acknowledge and process grief. I’m fiercely humble in this space as grief is complicated and each person’s grief process is as unique as their thumb print. I believe the griever is creative, resourceful and can heal, recover and thrive when they face their pain, suffering and struggle. I’m committed to providing information so we can learn, grow, create healthy responses to grief and support ourselves and others in helpful ways to process grief.

Tony and I have been partners in crime grief for two decades. We’ve ridden the waves of grief together. Some grief waves felt like tsunamis, some felt like gently rolling waves and some waves were in between the extremes. We’ve lost so many beautiful people over the years, faced our own losses due to medical issues caused by cancer and treatments and witnessed the losses and grief of others from cancer. We can continue to serve our cancer community because we face our grief. Otherwise, the weight of grief would paralyze us.

Tony grieves in private first and then reaches out to me and shares his feelings and thoughts while I witness his grief. I reach out to Tony first and share my feelings and talk through my grief, he witnesses and then I continue to grieve in private. There’s no “right” way to grieve. What’s important is that we carve out space and time to grieve. Grieving is an expression of acknowledging that our lives are changed because we’ve lost someone or something we cared about and loved.

This is the second article in the series about the complexities of grief. Here’s the link to the first article if you missed it – What Is Grief?

Let’s dive in. This article covers the timelines/types of grief, how grief shows up in our lives and how, by facing our grief, we can better cope, manage, and understand its impact. Feel it to heal it.

A quick refresher about grief. Grief is a universal human experience. If you experience change, you experience loss. If you experience loss, you experience grief.

Defining Grief – What is Grief?

Grief is a feeling that comes after loss. It can accompany any event that disrupts or challenges our sense of normalcy.

*Timeline of Grief – Approximations as grief has no timeline – helpful for interventions

  • Anticipatory grief: Grief before death or loss
  • Acute grief: When it just happened
  • Early grief: The first two years
  • Mature grief: The rest of their/our lives

 *Types of Grief

  • Delayed – Grief that we don’t feel in the moment because it’s not safe or we’re in survival mode
  • Disenfranchised – Any grief we judge or minimize
  • Ambiguous – Grief from your loved one being physically present but they’ve changed, whether emotionally, cognitively, or both
  • Inconclusive – Someone is believed to have died but there is no body to grieve. It breeds conspiracy theories
  • Complicated – When painful emotions of loss don’t improve with time and are so severe that you have trouble resuming and or creating your life
  • Collective and public – When we grieve as a group because of an event or public figure
  • Traumatic – Combines trauma with bereavement or grief responses
  • Masked – Grief that is presenting in another way and the resulting feeling is actually a response to grief
  • Anticipatory – The grief that comes before death
  • Cumulative – When someone experiences multiple losses during a short period and or unattended grief that builds up
  • Secondary loss – The other losses that accompany grief in addition to the primary emotional response

*The timeline and types of grief are from David Kessler’s Grief Educator Training.

How Grief Shows Up – It’s normal, natural and common to experience one or more of the following symptoms – from Tidewell Hospice Grief Education and Support Center: (Italics are intentional to break up the list.)

Loneliness, Irritability or being quick to anger, mood changes over the slightest issue, crying at unexpected times, feeling empty inside, surprise that grief can hurt so intensely, trouble concentrating, feeling out of control, feeling that things are not ‘real’, wondering what there is left to love and live for, tightness in the throat and heaviness in the chest, experiencing the mind as is it is on a ‘merry-go-round’ that won’t stop – ruminating, trouble sleeping, not feeling hungry or eating all the time, not wanting to be seen by other people when feeling sad or depressed, feeling some relief that the stress of ‘care-giving’ is over, sensing the loved one’s presence or hearing their voice, missing the feel of the loved one’s touch, missing the help of a loved one in making decisions, wondering if I’m grieving properly, gaping hole in my chest…

 This is a looong and incomplete list. It reflects how grief impacts us emotionally, mentally, physically, cognitively, spiritually and in many other ways.

Grief is most often associated with death, which is why when a person is diagnosed with cancer and is experiencing loneliness, irritability, sleep disturbances, lack of energy, trouble concentrating, sadness, etc., and I share, “It sounds like you’re grieving,” their look conveys one of an epiphany. Yes, it’s grief. Their tears then flow freely.

From diagnosis, through treatment, completion of treatment, which culminates in the ceremonial “ringing of the bell”, and sadly, sometimes death from cancer, grief is woven in, with and through us. What if, instead of pushing it down, numbing it, pretending it’s not there, we face our grief, accept that it’s a human experience and welcome it on our beautiful life adventure?

What if…?

There’s so much grief talk ahead. The next article will cover helpful models and story of how we process grief.

If you have questions or comments, please reach out to me via email at lori@teamtony.org.