This book is recommended for anyone dealing with grief & loss.
It gives a framework on how to process the emotion, build resilience, and how to help including what to say (and not say) to people currently grieving.
“Grief is just love with no place to go.” - Jamie Anderson
Grief comes in waves. When a tragic event happens, grief will be a terrible freaking tsunami. This may last for days, weeks, even months. After a while, you find a way to stay above the waves, then out of nowhere, in 6 months of not crying, a wave hits you like a brick wall again and you are bawling in the office without any specific trigger.
Eventually waves of grief get farther apart, but this book helps with ways to ease the process through understanding what the hell is going on. It was so useful for me, especially when these events make it feel like you have lost all control, this book gives you an anchor.
✨A key takeaway is that tragic events leads us to believe in the 3 P's:
Permanence: The believe that the aftershocks of the event will last forever.
Example; if my relationship failed, I might feel like I can never love again and my heart will be broken forever. Losing your job, meaning your reputation is doomed forever and you'll never find another job again. etc..
What to do.. Build confidence and compassion in yourself.
Try to remember all the past times you dealt with loss / failure and realize that you eventually you did mend your heart or did get back on your feet again.
Personalization: The belief that you caused the event.
Example; I believed I caused the death of someone I care about, because I shared something about my life that made him sad which then stressed him to a point it flared up his condition, not because his critical illness. My ex-husband cheated on me because something was wrong with me, not because his insecurities and avoidance issues.
Why we believe this.. We find a way to rationalize that we were the cause of this event, maybe to feel a some sense of control over such a life altering events. But this book reminds you that, it is irrational to believe that you have the power to control every single variable of whats going on. Even when its purely about yourself, example; if you got cancer, you might blame your eating, exercise, drinking habits, but it could have been the exposure to pollutants in your area, or a genetic condition, etc and you might never know the true reason or ways you could have prevented it. For me, this part was most difficult to overcome because if you don't know exactly what you could have done to prevent it, how do we make sure it doesn't happen again? What about accountability?
What to do.. Practice self-compassion.
Realize that being aware of the impact of your actions is different than taking the full burden of blame, especially for someone else's actions. Hopefully you'll stop beating yourself up.
Try to remind yourself that loss is a normal part of human experience and know that everyone deals with loss at some point, you'll feel less alone.
Pervasiveness: The believe that your whole life will suck because of this.
Example; The pain of grieve can blind you. Like when you are having an amazing walk through the park, the air is fresh, flowers are blossoming, then suddenly you step in dog poop. All you can think about is how the poop is now stuck in your shoes and now you can't use these shoes for dinner because you need to wash them and there is no time and the whole day sucks! Now escalate this feeling by 100x when you are grieving something more substantial = making it feel like your whole life sucks..
What to do.. don't focus on it forever. I know that sounds horrible, yes this event has shook us to our core, but try shifting focus for the split seconds grieve is not overwhelming you. Start simple, you have food to eat tonight / you have friends / you have a shoe / a job / a roof over your head / and if all is really gone, you have yourself and you are reading this article means you have hope and the will to push through. Life definitely will feel like like it sucks for a while, but the antidote for this one is perspective and taking a helicopter view.
Make space for joy - Even though this is the last thing you want to do, and it may even fill you with guilt to do so, I promise you, this one is a must and yes you deserve to live a life of joy despite this event. Start with taking 1 minute to laugh with your kid, buy that chocolate chip cookie and immerse yourself in it. No matter how small it is, look for those slithers of joy and hold on to them, this will keep you above the waves to catch your breathe and then it will become a habit.
Find connection - It could be as simple as eating their favorite food or watching a show they loved to feel like they are there with you enjoying the moment. This helps turn grieve into an active form of love.
See the future through others - Seek out stories of survivors of similar traumatic events, this helped me so much to see that even though their pain was tremendous, their whole life did not fall apart, thus there is hope that mine wont either. (spoiler alert, it didn't.)
Contribute - Giving back reminds yourself that despite the challenges you face, you still have things to offer. This means that your whole life doesn't suck, even though a part of it sucks a whole lot right now.
An idea is to do something that the person you love, loved doing... When my dad passed, writing about how to help people deal with loss became a way to contribute & connect with him at the same time as he loved to write and help people.
The book also mentions post-traumatic growth, which is good, despite stemming from unwanted events.
When a traumatic event happens, you can regress, stay the same, or grow.
Pretend a close friend passed away, you can....
Grow: You become more appreciative of life, health, relationships and worry less about trivial matters.
Regress: You become nihilistic and hesitant to form close relationships.
Last little tip on helping someone you care about deal with grieve:
Kick the elephant out of the room
People tend to think not mentioning the tragic event will help them move forward, but most of the time they don't mention it because the are afriad to share the sad feeling. Lets be honest, people dont just get over tragic events, they need time to heal and space to make sense of it, so by just letting the person know you are a safe space to let them unburden their feelings, ther will feel seen.
Ask "How you are doing today?" not "How are you doing?"
This helps take the pressure off to say "I'm doing ok" and gives them space to say "Today was horrible." without the fear of feeling like a negative person.
The book explains all of these in a more profound way (obviously!) and I've added a bit of my own learnings from dealing with grieve to this book review,
Hopefully all it all it was a useful review and yes, its definitely worth reading the full book!
Did my experiences help with the book review or do you prefer a more to-the-point (less personal) book review?
Please comment and help me improve my writing!
Thanks for reading :)
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