It’s when these descriptions reach our broader society without explanation or nuance, or when they are misapplied by those who position themselves as experts – that they go terribly awry. I have no doubt that in the contexts in which they were working, these words and their operational definitions were useful and effective. Interestingly, when many of these words were first used by grief theorists starting in the early 20 th century, their intent was to help describe grief. In the context of grief, words like denial, detachment, unresolved, recovery, and acceptance (to name a few) could be interpreted many different ways and some of these interpretations offer false impressions and false promises. The words we use to label and describe grief matter and, in many ways, these words have been getting us into trouble for decades.
Grief is one of those experiences you can never fully understand until you actually experience it and, until that time, all a person has to go on is what they’ve observed and what they’ve been told. Especially, when trying to describe an experience that, for so many, is unfamiliar and frightening. Now you could say that I’m getting caught up in semantics, but sometimes semantics matter. So perhaps we recover from the intense distress of grief, but we don’t recover from the grief itself. What will, hopefully, return to a general baseline is the level of intense emotion, stress, and distress that a person experiences in the weeks and months following their loss. The loss, the person who died, our grief – they all get integrated into our lives and they profoundly change how we live and experience the world. To “recover” means to return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength, and as many would attest, when someone very significant dies, we never return to a pre-loss “normal”.
This isn’t to say that “recovery” doesn’t have a place in grief – it’s simply ‘what’ we’re recovering from that needs to be redefined. I’m sorry, I know us human-people appreciate things like closure and resolution, but this isn’t how grief goes. Let me reassure you, there are millions of people out there, right now, living normal and purposeful lives while also experiencing ongoing grief.Īll the things you’ve heard about getting over grief, going back to normal, and moving on – they are misrepresentations of what it means to love someone who has died. I also need to tell you that that not recovering from grief doesn’t doom you to a life of despair. Yes, I’m using the royal “we” because you and I are all a part of this club. I need to tell you that, in the face of significant loss, we don’t “recover” from grief. With that, the original article is presented below.
We believe that over time grief changes shape and comes to hold space for many different experiences and emotions – some of these experiences may be painful – like a milestone or the anniversary of a loved one’s death – but some of them may be comforting – like warm memories and the enduring role that your loved one plays in your life. Our belief is that grief encompasses more than just pain. No one should expect to live with the anguish associated with acute grief forever. It is important for all grieving people – despite their loss and experiences – to believe in the hope for healing. We feel it’s important to clarify upfront that when we say we don’t recover from grief or experience “grief recovery”, we do NOT mean that we don’t recover from the intense pain of loss. After some discussion with our insightful readers, we’re adding a brief preface to this article.
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