Finding light in the darkness, navigating loss.

Part of the human experience is to experience grief and loss.   It is perhaps the most universal human experience, and often we don’t discuss it openly.  It visits us all, whether through the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, job loss, or even the passage of time, which can change everything we once knew.  Often in our grief, we feel profoundly alone, as if we were the first person to walk this path. 

In 1969, a psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, defined the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  These stages have become widely accepted in society.   Due to the complexity of human emotions, grief rarely follows a set course.  Grief is not a problem to be solved nor a disorder to be cured; it is the natural response to loss.  These stages can occur out of order, sometimes simultaneously, and sometimes they can circle back and repeat in different orders.   There is no magic formula for how each person will experience them.  

Our culture often treats grief like a temporary inconvenience- something to get over or move past.   Many jobs give bereavement leave in the form of days not months.   People ask if we are feeling better and doing OK, if they ask at all.   Like other things in life, we try to ignore them, hoping they will go away.  I feel that sometimes we feel if we ask about someone’s grief, they may relive it again and we are uncomfortable with other people’s pain.  I interviewed a woman, whom I will call Sue, who lost her 19-year-old son, and she said that she didn’t wish to be alone, and what mattered most was knowing people were there for her.   She did not expect them to take the pain away nor to understand the depth of her pain.   She said, especially in the early stages, having people tell you that time will heal or that your loved one was in a better place was not helpful.   What was helpful was knowing she was not alone and didn’t even need to talk or express anything.  Having people hold space for her was the most helpful.  Another man, I will call John, who lost both his parents in a year.   He shared that you know on some level that your parents will die before you, and that doesn’t make you prepared for the loss or make it less painful.   The emotional response to grief is real and mostly universal.

Grief is not something that we move past or get over; it is something we learn to carry differently.   The goal is not to return to who we were before the loss-that person no longer exists.  Instead, we learn to become someone new, someone who can hold both sorrow and joy in the same heart.  What has surprised some people I’ve spoken to about grief is that joy doesn’t wait for sorrow to finish, because it doesn’t ever. Instead, they learn to coexist, which can be an emotional state that feels complex and overwhelming.   The mother I mentioned earlier said that when she finally started to feel glimpses of joy and hope again, she initially felt guilty.   How could she feel joy when there was still sorrow?   This feeling of guilt is widespread for those going through grief and starting to find purpose again.  Our co-founder, Deborah, has lost loved ones in her 103 years, including two husbands, her son, and her granddaughter.  When people ask her how she handles such loss, she responds that she believes her loved ones would want her to go on and to have a good and joyful life.   She says she still misses them and lights candles daily to keep their memory alive.  It allows her to honor her losses while still embracing new possibilities.     

Sue says she and her daughter go to Disneyland, a place she, her son, and her daughter used to enjoy together, and she sets aside her son’s birthday to do something to honor him and his memory.   John says he sits in nature, as this is something his parents loved and appreciated.  He is also comforted by focusing on gratitude for the lives they lived.   Both Sue and he believe that having faith practices has given them great comfort.   

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”  While we can’t choose our losses, we can choose what meaning we make from them.   If we are all a sum of our life experiences, our losses become part of who we are in the world. 

Sue, like others who suffer loss, channeled her grief into starting foundations, volunteering, or being more present for others who are suffering.  Sue wrote a book about her experience of losing her son and is now a grief recovery counselor. Others find meaning in other creative expressions, in deeper relationships, and in renewed appreciation for life’s fragility and beauty in the present moment.

One of my favorite poets is Rumi; “Grief can be the garden of compassion.  If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in life’s search for love and wisdom.” Grief teaches us this profound truth: that our capacity for pain is matched only by our capacity for resilience, growth, and even joy.  Our journey with grief and loss can help us discover the depths of strength we never knew we possessed.  And in that discovery, there is light on the other side-not the absence of darkness, but the realization that we can carry both.