The Work of Grieving
In last month’s article, “How People Grieve,” I discussed the nature of grief and explored how people experience the aftermath of a death, by using two analogies: riding a roller coaster in the dark and suddenly being lost in an unfamiliar forest. These analogies help people to understand both the out of control nature of the grieving process and the fact that there is work to do to heal well.
It’s hard for a person who is mourning to prepare for the out of control emotions that swirl around inside and revisit them over and over again. The same is true for the inability to function in the world in the way the person did before. They might find it hard to focus and concentrate at work, summon the will to take care of cleaning the house or doing the bills, or to socialize with friends. I suggested that the best way to handle the emotions and the functional difficulties is to lean in rather than to suppress the feelings or distract oneself by becoming overly busy. These are the general principles for coping with grief, but don’t really speak to what a person needs to do to heal. That is the focus of this month’s article.
There are four primary tasks to work through when grieving. The first is to rebuild or rediscover a sense of who they are following the death. When someone very close dies it too often shatters a person’s sense of identity. “Who am I now, without this person?” is often the question asked internally, if not out loud. People commonly think of themselves in relationship to others: their role as an adult child to a parent, or as a spouse, a partner, a lover, a sibling, a caretaker, a playmate, and so on. Without the other person people lose their roles, their identity. Naturally, some of a person’s other roles remain in place. But it is the primary roles that were bound up in the person who died that are now left hanging, frayed, or completely broken down.
A person works on their identity by building up the strength of their independent sense of self. One way to work on this is to look back at parts of the self that were abandoned along the way in life. Perhaps a person’s spiritual seeking was neglected in the busy demands of life, or a passion for music, painting or history was left behind. Reexamining those parts of the self, a mourner starts to fill in the blanks left by the death. They also need to consider their strengths, values, and how they related to others, in other words a review of what made them who they were prior to the death. In this way, they may discover that those qualities still exist inside without needing a particular relationship to experience them or to put them to use.
Of course, rebuilding a sense of identity may involve finding new values or character traits that evolve out of the brokenness inside. This is one of the less talked about aspects of grieving: that when a person is broken open by a death, they have the best chance of changing and growing against the internal obstacles that blocked them in the past. The work on identity involves some of the same meaning-directed life review that doulas use with a dying person. The life review helps a mourner rebuild the self at the same time that it helps in rediscovering a sense of purpose and meaning, which is one of the other four tasks of grief work.
We understand the purpose and meaning of our life often in relationship to the people we love. As a husband and father my sense of purpose is very much bound up in my desire to make the life of my wife and children as good as I can make it. How I live, the choices I make, the goals I hold, and the future I envision center on living my love of my wife and adult children. In a similar way, any close relationship helps to determine a person’s sense of purpose and their vision of the future. When a person who is so much a part of one’s sense of purpose dies, there is a great hole that needs to be refilled. And, when someone takes care of a dying person day in and day out, their loss of purpose is further confounded.
To help someone who is grieving rediscover purpose and direction in their life, a doula will utilize the same life review approach that helps explore the sense of identity. As different fragments from the shattered sense of purpose are explored, the doula will encourage the mourner to try out possibilities that can lead to a new sense of purpose. The work on purpose is something that goes on throughout the entire grieving process. Its seeds may be planted even early in a person’s journey through grief, but the great energy that it takes isn’t usually available until the inner turmoil of grief has subsided. So, while doulas may not work with someone throughout the grief process, they can help the mourner understand how to handle the task of rediscovering purpose, when that work becomes the focus of their healing.
Another of the four tasks of grief is to reestablish the mourner’s sense of spirituality. A person’s beliefs and values are often shaken considerably following a death. They may question how God could take their loved one away at a time when they relied on them the most for companionship. Or, a person may feel that their loved one’s death was unfair because of how good they were and how well they lived their life.
Reaffirming one’s faith or discovering new beliefs, within or without their past allegiance and understanding, also takes work. They have to reexamine their beliefs, explore new approaches to prayer or meditation, or try out other faith practices. Like exploring the sense of purpose and life direction, this examination of beliefs is a matter of trying things on and learning where to go next out of that experience.
The last of the four tasks of grieving is learning how to open one’s heart again. This task usually takes on a more central role towards the end of active grieving. In some ways, it may be the hardest of the four tasks, because it opens a person to being vulnerable again, to offering their heart when it is possible that the heart will be broken yet again. But this task is essential to healing well.
Learning to open the heart isn’t about finding a new romantic relationship or removing the emotional energy from the person who died. It’s about allowing the relationship to have its internal space, at the same time that the mourner can offer their love to other people and to the passions that will drive them in the future.
All four tasks of healing from loss require that the mourner turns away from how things used to be and journey toward a different future that will hold a new sense of stability, safety, and happiness. It takes work, and harder work than they may have anticipated. This is the reason why it’s important for doulas to help the newly bereaved understand what the journey through grief entails. The doula will provide support and help the person see the distant hills they will need to climb to feel engaged in their life again. Those hills carry one to a new sense of who they are, their purpose in life, their spirituality, and the confidence that they can open their hearts to new possibilities.
In addition to using life review as a tool to help a mourner on their journey, doulas will find many ways to use guided visualization. This technique can help someone who is grieving balance some of the difficult moments of emotional turmoil or doubt with a sense of well-being. The special place visualization that we teach in our doula training is a great way for a mourner to bring light into the darkness of grief, even if just for 10-20 minutes. And, it can be used over and over again.
Other forms of guided visualization can help a mourner gather the internal strength to face the arduous tasks I have talked about above. Grieving is exhausting. So, reaching inside for the strength to continue finding the way out of the grief forest is quite helpful. Visualization is also a good way to get to sleep at night or to return to sleep after waking in the middle of the night.
Other uses of guided visualization include working on regrets or unfinished business that a mourner may be left with after the death. The mourner might be guided to an internal visit with the person who died, so they can say things they wish they had said or to ask for forgiveness. It is very important to work on these difficult pieces to clear the ground for moving forward on new paths into the future. A doula might also use guided visualization to help a person work through spiritual questions. The doula would guide the mourner in their imagination to a conversation or meeting with a spiritual figure who might help them find new answers.
Before attempting some of these other forms of visualization a doula should seek out specialized training. INELDA will offer a class in visualization starting in the spring of 2018. That class will teach those techniques and give doulas a chance to practice them.
Other techniques that are helpful in guiding a mourner through the grieving process are using journal writing, letter writing, mapping of emotions, ritual, cognitive restructuring, meditation, and more. INELDA will also offer a class in grief work later in 2018. That class will explore all these techniques and give doulas a firm grounding in how to guide and support a mourner during an extended period of reprocessing. I see this work as becoming more and more important to doulas as they get further along in their careers. It opens up a wider range of service and another source of income for doulas who will work directly for the dying and their families.
Please look for notices on our website about the classes on visualization and grief as we move into 2018. We will announce these new classes as we get closer to offering them.