Understanding Grief and Loss

Grief and Loss Explained​
Loss can be painful, relieving, confusing, exhausting, consuming and many other emotions too. 

Whichever emotions you feel, during your grief, is a normal response to a loss, even when you feel these at the same time!

It is a unique experience to the person who is grieving and is an experience that needs support from others.  In order to do that, there needs to be an understanding of what that looks like. 

Being able to understand what the grieving person may be experiencing goes a long way to actually being able to help them.

We know that grief is a normal response to a loss.  It can also be complicated due to the very nature of being human and the influences in our lives.  The intensity and length of the experience of grief varies and is unique to each of us.

Grief can bring about many challenges.  Affecting relationships, our own beliefs, our world as we know it.

Having support from others can help us to deal with changes brought on by the loss we have experienced.  Support can help us to navigate through the changes and the challenges change can bring. 

Quite often we don’t know what to say to someone who is experiencing a loss.  The person experiencing the loss may want to be in your company so they are not alone, or to be listened to.  Others may need to put their ‘loss into action’, by joining a group or starting a project. 

What can we do to support those who have suffered a loss?

• We can be of support by helping them to express their feelings, through music or an activity.
• We can be of support by helping them to honour the loss (person or thing).
• We can be of support by letting them know, we are there for them, when they need us and by remembering that we are not trying to take away their grief or fix them.
• We can be of support by doing real, practical things that they might find supportive during their time of grief, to retain some degree of normality in their changing circumstances.
• We can support them by actually asking them what is going on for them to find out where they are at, in this moment.  With a curious stance, rather than the intent to fix or change. 

Whether it is you who is experiencing the loss or someone you know, the experience can feel there is a lack of control, which can lead to a sense of helplessness.

What can we do for ourselves?

• We can be compassionate toward ourselves, allowing ourselves to regain a sense of safety, a sense of calm and balance, accepting what we feel and not what others need us to feel.
• We can reach out to others.
• We can be try a new activity.
• We can share our memories, or story with others.
• We can put our energy into caring for others.
• We can educate ourselves on Grief and Loss.
• We can make sure we are getting rest, food and time with supportive others.
• We can put our thoughts in a journal.
• We can create a memory box or photo album.
• We can create a legacy in honour of the person.
• We can accept that over time grief will become more manageable even when it does not feel that way.
• We can reach out to the many support groups now available.

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