Continuing Grief

There is a very long list of all the things that can prompt grief, outside of simply losing a loved one. These can include a breakup, moving away for college, parental estrangement, a diagnosis, or many other life changes. Grief can be persistent, exceptionally sad, and it can come in waves that don’t feel as if they are calming down. It can show up at times that aren’t anticipated and in ways you wouldn’t expect. When grief is so intense that it limits your ability to do your daily life, such as returning to work after a period of mourning, and there is an excessive focus on the death, this may be Complicated Grief, or Prolonged Grief Disorder. Any measure of grief can be benefited by therapy, but this level of severity may certainly call for some professional assistance. 

This blog, however, is not about Complicated Grief, but instead about continuing grief. There are types of circumstances that continue into your life, and prompt grief to continue as well. Some of these may be a progressively worsening disease (for yourself, a child, or a loved one), parenting children through a divorce or being a child of divorce yourself, or multiple cancer recurrences. In these instances, there isn’t simply one event that occurred to trigger grief, there’s a continuation of occurrences that happen which can feel just as sad and overwhelming at times as the first. Perhaps it’s a child who has to keep moving between two parents’ houses, perpetually saying goodbye and feeling the loss of one parent or the other. It may be a diagnosis which year after year takes more and more from your quality of life or requires more caregiving from you. In these situations, there’s an ebb and flow to both re-experiencing your grief, needing an outlet to process it, and a heightened need for coping with the losses as they keep coming. All grief continues after a loss, but these situations sometimes call for a different approach to how we cope in the long term.

When I explain this to younger kids, we talk about how things keep filling up their sad bucket along with the need for the sad bucket to always have holes to let the sadness out. These may be their favorite recreational activities, allowing themselves to cry/draw/journal the sadness out, seeing friends/family that fill them with love, or seeking comfort in a pet. While a sad bucket may be a childish metaphor, the principle stays the same no matter what age we are. If we’re in a situation where the grief and sadness will keep coming, and things will continue to be hard or get harder, there’s a need to continue to process that sadness and keep fighting to find hope and happiness amidst the pain. 

For an adult, these ways of coping don’t have to be all that different. Perhaps you benefit from reading a good book on your porch, going on a walk before work, playing basketball at the park, or listening to your favorite podcast on your commute. Social support to bolster your mood may be a bible study, support group, therapy sessions, or a weekly friend hang out night. These can be small things, but a daily pattern of small benefits to your happiness, mental health, and quality of life can lead to huge changes in how you feel. If grief won’t let up, then lifestyle changes to prioritize your wellbeing can’t either. Making them a pattern in your life may be essential to continue to ride the grief as it hits in new ways.