Handling Grief

I was reading yesterday and came across something quite interesting.  The author said that we are never truly healed until we handle our grief.  It would seem that the idea of changing the world one interaction at a time has something to do with healing.  If that is true then we must learn how to heal. This must begin within our own hearts if we are to truly have something to give to others.

People are uncomfortable with grief and particularly so in the western culture.  We work tirelessly to protect our children from grief and in so doing we do not prepare them to handle it in their own lives. The likely cause of this is because we are filled with our own grief that we have failed to handle because we have never been taught how and we are afraid of the powerful depths of grief.

When I was a young girl, just thirteen years old, my mother died.  I had friends that were caring and well meaning, but had no idea how to even be around me.  I was uncomfortable with my own grief and I was uncomfortable with their discomfort.  A day or two after my mom died the house was filled with people and my friends were sitting with me.  Spontaneous tears began rolling down my face.  I did not know what to do and neither did they.  Strangely, I apologized to them for crying.  Looking back on this I understand that we were just children and knew barely anything of the world and certainly did not know how to handle our emotions or comfort others in emotional distress.

Years later I had another devastating blow with grief.  My husband and I had tried for a long time to conceive.  After a long time of trying we were elated to find we were pregnant.  We had started to gather baby things and made plans and had told a few people as we were nearing the end of the first trimester.  As we were enjoying dinner out one night, an ominous feeling came over me that I tried hard to push back.  Over the next few days I prayed and went on bed rest and did everything I possibly could to be healthy and save our fragile child.  The following days lead an excruciatingly painful experience, both physically and emotionally, of losing our child.

I had no idea how to begin to emotionally process my experience.  The one thing I decided was that I was going to experience my grief however it came to me.  My emotional pain ran deep and I was intentional about not hiding it or squelching it.  This was very disconcerting to my family.  Each had their own grief they didn't know how to handle, but further, they didn't know how to handle someone being open and real about experiencing grief.  While they were very troubled, I determined to do what I needed to do to experience it and heal.  Taking this approach allowed me to heal and live from a positive perspective.  If I had not grieved, I do not believe I would have healed.

My thought is that many, if not most, are not trained in the way to experience and process grief.  This means that each day we will encounter many carrying invisible wounds of grief.  What can we do then to bring healing to a wounded heart?  How would we treat someone who we knew was grieving?

How is this important to changing the world?  We need to remember that many we interact with each day have unhealed wounds.  How can this knowledge change how we interact?  Perhaps we can see each person as someone who may be hurting and offer kindness, gentleness, understanding and love.

Today's challenge:  Today we should see each person we interact with as someone who may have a place of grief in their heart.  What would you say?  How would you say it?  What kindness or gentleness would you offer?  Perhaps in all we do we can be understanding and treat one another with the attributes of love.  Meeting this challenge could make a great difference in our world!