What Grief Wants From You
Step one: stop looking for the finish line
One of my least-favorite of the recent phenomenons is the annual nattering around whether or not to set resolutions. We’ve all known people whose insistence on “new year, new me” is grating to hear and exhausting to continue hearing about, while others on Team No Resolutions so often meet the hope of these goals with explicit cynicism about the predestined futility of these January-aligned aims. Fueled by online algorithms committed to content and controversy, we continue mistaking cynicism for wisdom, as if there is some great insight to be gleaned from the decision to say “no” to a new possibility.
Here at YMH, we love the words of Victor Frankl, particularly those found in the pages of his seminal Man’s Search for Meaning. A psychologist who survived the horrors of Auschwitz, Frankl’s work gave rise to logotherapy, a school of psychological inquiry that posits the search for life’s meaning as the catalyzing force behind all human behavior. If Frankl was confronted with our modern day resolutions, he would be less interested in how we wanted to lose weight and more interested in the why of that goal.
Grief is not something you can speed up, but you can certainly slow it down.
So many bereaved and grieving people glom onto grief resources because they want to know how they can get over what they’re feeling as quickly as possible. They treat grief like excess weight, like something to be starved and shed. This is all too common, and it is all too wrong.
Frankl used to say “Don’t ask what you want from life. Ask what life wants from you”. Wanting to feel better as you grieve is an understandable desire, but setting the goal before asking the right questions is doing grief backwards.
Because more than declaring what it is you want from your grief, it’s better to wonder what your grief wants from you.
A non-exhaustive list of desires your grief may have for you:
Acknowledge that this grief is here and it’s real.
Give it permission to stick around.
Understand that it comes in waves.
Know that there may be triggers that intensify your grief.
Wrestle with the hard truth that grief sometimes shows up just because it wants to.
Your grief wants you to know it’s ok to smile, that you can laugh and grieve at the same time.
Grief wants you to fully feel it.
It wants you to figure out how to give your grief space to breathe so it doesn’t choke you.
You’re not failing by feeling.
Accept that navigating grief well does not necessarily culminate in happiness.
Quantum physics holds that anytime we observe something, we change it. Grief is no different. The practice of paying attention to your grief will fundamentally change your relationship with it.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl writes, “For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself…I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run…success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”
Navigating grief well does not follow the goal of “stop grieving”. One of the best habits you can cultivate in your grief journey is enhancing and increasing your uncertainty tolerance. When our knee-jerk reaction to questions is to seek out simple, concrete solutions, growing your uncertainty tolerance is crucial as you confront the unpredictable character and activity of grief. Doing so helps you acknowledge your limits, what you can and cannot control, all while preparing you to respond to your grief (not to mention your family, friends, work, habits, and practices) in healthier ways.
It may feel daunting, but as Emerson wrote, “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” Grief is not something you can speed up, but you can certainly slow it down. Take care of future you; give them every opportunity to experience life on the other side of what brought you here.