The following note expresses my own opinions and not necessarily those of the Friends Along the Road organization. - Dave Pierce
Oh Friends along my road, the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks is upon us, and for several days now I have been monitoring bereavement sites on Facebook and throughout the Internet, as well as television and print news outlets, to see how they are focusing on it, how they are narrowing down topics to carve news stories out of it, presenting various viewpoints, and generally trying to sift meaning from the event's ever-recycled rubble. There are myriad human interest pieces, thoughtful reflections, hopeful suggestions, statist pronouncements, angry declarations, dark theories and counter-theories, and some caring sympathy pieces. All I know is that I am and always have been terribly sad for the families and friends of those who were killed or maimed, and for all of us, who grieve and hurt in many ways because of what happened - and the resonance of it that continues through our lives.
As with you, I know that the images I saw on TV that day are with me for life. But also with me is what I saw happen after, following closely the words of the president, the coverage by the media, and regarding it all from the perspective of someone attuned to grieving and support of those in grief. Astonishingly, the families were not immediately offered consolation by officials, and other agendas were forced to the front of our attention. But for me it is, first, about the families and friends of those who died.
Second, it is about the rest of us.
A few years after the attacks, I had as a regular passenger in the airport transportation van I drove a New York City fire chief whose knee was destroyed by a falling body part; this kind man's story, shared with me then, personalized everything and made me realize that we had all been injured. I realized that shock-waves from the attacks had spread outward, to the world.
Much focus has been placed through the years on who dunnit, but my focus will continue to be on the families, on the lives of all who died, and on all of us who continue to live through 9-11, including the first responders, the citizens of New York, and, indirectly, everyone in the world.
I may have more to say on this topic but welcome your thoughts, from a bereavement perspective.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Move on from Grief? You Don't Have To.
Your grief is your own and no one has the right to say otherwise. No one should ever tell you it is time to move on. The anguish you feel may bum out family members and friends, and be seen as a challenge to psychiatrists and grief counselors, but if you do not feel like moving on you don't have to. If that fact inconveniences others it is their problem.
Now, please understand: Many therapists, counselors, and peers provide excellent support for those in grief. They would never insist that anyone in grief needs to “move on.” They might prove very resourceful should you seek their help understanding your grief, learning to live with it, working through it, finding your place in the world. It is not to these fine individuals that I speak.
Nor do I speak for every person in grief. How could I? Each person grieves in his or her own way. Me too. It is my own grief that prompts me to write that I have no intention of moving on from the complicated feelings I have about the death of my daughter, my only child. I hurt, I cry, I laugh, I love, I grow. I live. Moving “past”or “beyond” my grief – or getting over it - is not part of this picture.
Some in deep grief have a strong desire for an end to their pain. For whatever reason – unquenchable optimism, a religious conviction that God will provide healing, a powerful spiritual experience, a need to do what their deceased loved ones “would want them to do,” or because they have families to take care of and feel the need to appear “normal” – some people in grief are drawn to healing. They wish to move on.
“Being healed” and “moving on” from grief is fine if that is one's choice.
Others, however, hold tight to grief. Their losses are too great for them to consider “letting go.” Faced with such primal questions as whether they should stay alive after losing the ones they lived for, these bereaved parents, children, siblings, cousins, spouses, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and friends, find that the everyday assumptions they held before death struck seem now to lack meaning and immediacy. Going to job? Being productive? Being a good consumer, a model family member, a team player? Such notions can seem suddenly empty and bizarre to those who have lost the loves of their lives. To some in grief, society itself can appear as a meaningless accretion, a game people play that allows them to almost never face the fact that they and all their loved ones will someday die.
Death and grief can bring about, in some, the need for profound reappraisal of all they once took for granted. It can stimulate speculation of the most existential kind. Whereas before the loss of their precious ones they never gave much thought about the fundamental assumptions of culture and society, and even existence itself, they might now be pondering such thoughts as, “Should I carry on? Why? Are there compelling reasons for me to do so? If there are such reasons, how do I find them?”
For those drawn to face considerations as serious as life itself, thoughts about “getting over” one's grief, “moving on,” and “being healed” may never enter their minds; and if they do, may seem like absurd notions from another universe. To some they may seem like further torment to be endured for the sake of others.
What's more, the extreme, off-the-charts emotional pain of a loved one's death, based in raw immeasurable love, may come to be the most significant connection one might feel with the deceased, and be a very compelling reason to stay alive. Precious by virtue of intensity and association.
The death of a loved one – a child let us say - can be the single most potent event in a person's life; it may not eclipse the importance of the child's birth, but love for the child, and memories of the child's birth and participation in the world, may actually intensify the parents' feelings of loss and pain by alluding to all that has been lost, creating a massive confusion of feelings both wonderful and hellish. Compared with the stark and brutal reality of a loved one's death, most everything else in life may appear trivial. The world may seem crazy, insensate, with its machine-like tendency to move around and around on its axis and circle the Sun; and its people – focused a great deal on the pursuit of pleasure (at least in several of the developed nations) – can seem to embody the very idea of meaninglessness.
The pain of grief can sometimes seem the only thing the bereaved have to hold onto. And why shouldn't they hold on? Who else has the right to say they shouldn't – that they are “sick,” that they need treatment, that they need to be “healed”?
Grief can be a powerful connection with our dead loved ones. Sacred. Something that can be explored anew each day in an attempt to connect more deeply with the lives of our dead, and to search through for reasons why we are given life only to have it inevitably snatched away. The continuous and ever-changing nature of the way we honor dead family members and friends, and the central questions of existence we explore as we grieve, may either kill us or give us strength to carry on. And no one else is in a position to decide these things for us, unless of course we want them to, and they are willing to try.
Psychiatrists, bereavement counselors, clergy, family members, and friends may view our attachment to grief as a pathology, an illness, a morbid and unhealthy condition to be “treated.” In fact the year 2000 revision of the DSM IV – the (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association – retains language to the effect that any grief lasting beyond two months should be diagnosed as "depression." Whether or not a person in grief has depression, and sometimes it is the case that they do, it is cruel for the APA and those who follow the DSM recommendations to make this decision for them; the list of symptoms which the book uses to diagnose depression rather than grief looks pretty much like the symptoms of those in grief! To automatically call it "depression" gives members of the medical and healing communities the false justification they may be looking for in order to prescribe antidepressants and psychotherapy to those in grief. This may prove beneficial for the pharmaceutical companies, but not necessarily for the bereaved, as with grief over the death of a child, in which the parents and siblings may experience such symptoms for years. It also affects the policy-making decisions used by the attorneys and doctors who write the DSM, and influences the way politicians and corporations determine their policies for bereavement leave. Does the diagnosis of depression after two months sound arbitrary? The authors preparing the DSM V are implying that two weeks is actually sufficient - and after that, the bereaved, including bereaved parents, have "depression."
Parents who have lost children (and there are many other scenarios of loss that apply) may be harmed immeasurably by a society that would have them “get beyond” the deaths of their children.
As if we can shut off the most intense emotions of our entire lives like turning off a hot-water spigot! As if the lives and memories of our loved ones are less important than our former culturally-sanctioned pursuits of making money and contributing to the GNP! This prevailing medical view of long-term grief as an “illness” is perhaps our Western society's greatest example of the avoidance of death, and demonstrates that society itself may be the sick entity, based as it is on the spurious assumptions of a largely consumerist, death-avoiding culture.
Thank goodness that enlightened members of the bereavement community are working hard so the APA will eliminate this disastrous language in the DSM V, due out in 2013. It is something we need to follow up on; we must keep up pressure on the APA to instead use language explaining that experiences of grief are unique for each person, and may have no limits on duration or intensity.
The bereaved individual might be quite the opposite of sick: it is possible that, in being led by severe grief to question the tenets of existence, he or she is having an awakening of sorts. Remember the science fiction movie “They Live,” in which the guy finds a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see what the messages really say on signs, television, and food-packaging? Things like, “Consume;” “Stay Asleep;” “Submit to Authority.” Everyone else thinks he's crazy – until they too put on the glasses and see for themselves.
Many in our society, including some bereavement counselors, are like those citizens in the movie who blithely maintain their socially-approved views of life until they themselves put on the glasses, which reveal conditions shockingly different from anything they ever imagined. When the glasses of grief are worn, they can make apparent such unnoticed yet persistent assumptions as, "Deny Death," "Get Over Your Grief," "Appear Happy No Matter What."
When the bereaved do hold onto their grief, learning just how much they love and wish to honor their deceased loved ones – and when they use these feelings and thoughts as springboards for reevaluating their lives – they may find that they have no intentions of submitting to any predefined notions of how one should grieve. That is quite alright. Their awakenings may be deeply personal, and they may conclude, rightly, that family members, friends, and therapists do not have the right to interfere with their discoveries, unless of course the bereaved are intending to physically harm themselves, or others.
If those who love you say that they want the “old you” back, or suggest it's time for you to "move on," thinking they know what's best for you, you needn't give in to their entreaties even though you love them, too, and don't wish them to suffer. Their grief is secondary grief, and you, as the primary person in grief, should not have to bear their grief for you on top of what you already have. Doing so creates a kind of secondary grief in yourself, as well.
At Friends Along the Road, we will never suggest that people should “move on,” "get over” their grief, or “be healed.” If healing is what our clients truly want, then this is wonderful and we will gratefully provide them with resources, including referrals to qualified therapists and counselors who specialize in healing options for the bereaved. But if the clients want to fully explore the loss of their loved ones at their own speed, in their own ways, then we will offer them safe places – temporary or permanent – in which to do so. We regard each person's grief as a sacred event, something possibly far more precious than fitting back into society as a good worker/consumer, and we believe that each grieving individual has the potential to write his or her best manual on grieving.
Sometimes, the best thing to do to help those in grief is to make them as safe and comfortable as possible, be present for them to the extent they desire, and get out of their way while they make their own journeys of discovery. Will this enable all our clients to emerge from grief as better, more sensitive and caring, more whole individuals? Or to even emerge? No. But we won't be attempting to control experiences that are essentially their own. By allowing them to simply grieve, in the ways only they can know are best for them, they may actually decide to live. In some cases to live more fully. And in the best possible outcomes, to surprise everyone with their transformations. Who knows what to expect? I certainly don't. By not expecting, we allow the possibility of the wonderfully unexpected.
To learn more about sanctuary and caring support for those in grief, and about creating Sanctuary Anywhere for the grieving, please visit Friends Along the road on the Internet at www.friendsalongtheroad.org.
Now, please understand: Many therapists, counselors, and peers provide excellent support for those in grief. They would never insist that anyone in grief needs to “move on.” They might prove very resourceful should you seek their help understanding your grief, learning to live with it, working through it, finding your place in the world. It is not to these fine individuals that I speak.
Nor do I speak for every person in grief. How could I? Each person grieves in his or her own way. Me too. It is my own grief that prompts me to write that I have no intention of moving on from the complicated feelings I have about the death of my daughter, my only child. I hurt, I cry, I laugh, I love, I grow. I live. Moving “past”or “beyond” my grief – or getting over it - is not part of this picture.
Some in deep grief have a strong desire for an end to their pain. For whatever reason – unquenchable optimism, a religious conviction that God will provide healing, a powerful spiritual experience, a need to do what their deceased loved ones “would want them to do,” or because they have families to take care of and feel the need to appear “normal” – some people in grief are drawn to healing. They wish to move on.
“Being healed” and “moving on” from grief is fine if that is one's choice.
Others, however, hold tight to grief. Their losses are too great for them to consider “letting go.” Faced with such primal questions as whether they should stay alive after losing the ones they lived for, these bereaved parents, children, siblings, cousins, spouses, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and friends, find that the everyday assumptions they held before death struck seem now to lack meaning and immediacy. Going to job? Being productive? Being a good consumer, a model family member, a team player? Such notions can seem suddenly empty and bizarre to those who have lost the loves of their lives. To some in grief, society itself can appear as a meaningless accretion, a game people play that allows them to almost never face the fact that they and all their loved ones will someday die.
Death and grief can bring about, in some, the need for profound reappraisal of all they once took for granted. It can stimulate speculation of the most existential kind. Whereas before the loss of their precious ones they never gave much thought about the fundamental assumptions of culture and society, and even existence itself, they might now be pondering such thoughts as, “Should I carry on? Why? Are there compelling reasons for me to do so? If there are such reasons, how do I find them?”
For those drawn to face considerations as serious as life itself, thoughts about “getting over” one's grief, “moving on,” and “being healed” may never enter their minds; and if they do, may seem like absurd notions from another universe. To some they may seem like further torment to be endured for the sake of others.
What's more, the extreme, off-the-charts emotional pain of a loved one's death, based in raw immeasurable love, may come to be the most significant connection one might feel with the deceased, and be a very compelling reason to stay alive. Precious by virtue of intensity and association.
The death of a loved one – a child let us say - can be the single most potent event in a person's life; it may not eclipse the importance of the child's birth, but love for the child, and memories of the child's birth and participation in the world, may actually intensify the parents' feelings of loss and pain by alluding to all that has been lost, creating a massive confusion of feelings both wonderful and hellish. Compared with the stark and brutal reality of a loved one's death, most everything else in life may appear trivial. The world may seem crazy, insensate, with its machine-like tendency to move around and around on its axis and circle the Sun; and its people – focused a great deal on the pursuit of pleasure (at least in several of the developed nations) – can seem to embody the very idea of meaninglessness.
The pain of grief can sometimes seem the only thing the bereaved have to hold onto. And why shouldn't they hold on? Who else has the right to say they shouldn't – that they are “sick,” that they need treatment, that they need to be “healed”?
Grief can be a powerful connection with our dead loved ones. Sacred. Something that can be explored anew each day in an attempt to connect more deeply with the lives of our dead, and to search through for reasons why we are given life only to have it inevitably snatched away. The continuous and ever-changing nature of the way we honor dead family members and friends, and the central questions of existence we explore as we grieve, may either kill us or give us strength to carry on. And no one else is in a position to decide these things for us, unless of course we want them to, and they are willing to try.
Psychiatrists, bereavement counselors, clergy, family members, and friends may view our attachment to grief as a pathology, an illness, a morbid and unhealthy condition to be “treated.” In fact the year 2000 revision of the DSM IV – the (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association – retains language to the effect that any grief lasting beyond two months should be diagnosed as "depression." Whether or not a person in grief has depression, and sometimes it is the case that they do, it is cruel for the APA and those who follow the DSM recommendations to make this decision for them; the list of symptoms which the book uses to diagnose depression rather than grief looks pretty much like the symptoms of those in grief! To automatically call it "depression" gives members of the medical and healing communities the false justification they may be looking for in order to prescribe antidepressants and psychotherapy to those in grief. This may prove beneficial for the pharmaceutical companies, but not necessarily for the bereaved, as with grief over the death of a child, in which the parents and siblings may experience such symptoms for years. It also affects the policy-making decisions used by the attorneys and doctors who write the DSM, and influences the way politicians and corporations determine their policies for bereavement leave. Does the diagnosis of depression after two months sound arbitrary? The authors preparing the DSM V are implying that two weeks is actually sufficient - and after that, the bereaved, including bereaved parents, have "depression."
Parents who have lost children (and there are many other scenarios of loss that apply) may be harmed immeasurably by a society that would have them “get beyond” the deaths of their children.
As if we can shut off the most intense emotions of our entire lives like turning off a hot-water spigot! As if the lives and memories of our loved ones are less important than our former culturally-sanctioned pursuits of making money and contributing to the GNP! This prevailing medical view of long-term grief as an “illness” is perhaps our Western society's greatest example of the avoidance of death, and demonstrates that society itself may be the sick entity, based as it is on the spurious assumptions of a largely consumerist, death-avoiding culture.
Thank goodness that enlightened members of the bereavement community are working hard so the APA will eliminate this disastrous language in the DSM V, due out in 2013. It is something we need to follow up on; we must keep up pressure on the APA to instead use language explaining that experiences of grief are unique for each person, and may have no limits on duration or intensity.
The bereaved individual might be quite the opposite of sick: it is possible that, in being led by severe grief to question the tenets of existence, he or she is having an awakening of sorts. Remember the science fiction movie “They Live,” in which the guy finds a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see what the messages really say on signs, television, and food-packaging? Things like, “Consume;” “Stay Asleep;” “Submit to Authority.” Everyone else thinks he's crazy – until they too put on the glasses and see for themselves.
Many in our society, including some bereavement counselors, are like those citizens in the movie who blithely maintain their socially-approved views of life until they themselves put on the glasses, which reveal conditions shockingly different from anything they ever imagined. When the glasses of grief are worn, they can make apparent such unnoticed yet persistent assumptions as, "Deny Death," "Get Over Your Grief," "Appear Happy No Matter What."
When the bereaved do hold onto their grief, learning just how much they love and wish to honor their deceased loved ones – and when they use these feelings and thoughts as springboards for reevaluating their lives – they may find that they have no intentions of submitting to any predefined notions of how one should grieve. That is quite alright. Their awakenings may be deeply personal, and they may conclude, rightly, that family members, friends, and therapists do not have the right to interfere with their discoveries, unless of course the bereaved are intending to physically harm themselves, or others.
If those who love you say that they want the “old you” back, or suggest it's time for you to "move on," thinking they know what's best for you, you needn't give in to their entreaties even though you love them, too, and don't wish them to suffer. Their grief is secondary grief, and you, as the primary person in grief, should not have to bear their grief for you on top of what you already have. Doing so creates a kind of secondary grief in yourself, as well.
At Friends Along the Road, we will never suggest that people should “move on,” "get over” their grief, or “be healed.” If healing is what our clients truly want, then this is wonderful and we will gratefully provide them with resources, including referrals to qualified therapists and counselors who specialize in healing options for the bereaved. But if the clients want to fully explore the loss of their loved ones at their own speed, in their own ways, then we will offer them safe places – temporary or permanent – in which to do so. We regard each person's grief as a sacred event, something possibly far more precious than fitting back into society as a good worker/consumer, and we believe that each grieving individual has the potential to write his or her best manual on grieving.
Sometimes, the best thing to do to help those in grief is to make them as safe and comfortable as possible, be present for them to the extent they desire, and get out of their way while they make their own journeys of discovery. Will this enable all our clients to emerge from grief as better, more sensitive and caring, more whole individuals? Or to even emerge? No. But we won't be attempting to control experiences that are essentially their own. By allowing them to simply grieve, in the ways only they can know are best for them, they may actually decide to live. In some cases to live more fully. And in the best possible outcomes, to surprise everyone with their transformations. Who knows what to expect? I certainly don't. By not expecting, we allow the possibility of the wonderfully unexpected.
To learn more about sanctuary and caring support for those in grief, and about creating Sanctuary Anywhere for the grieving, please visit Friends Along the road on the Internet at www.friendsalongtheroad.org.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Grieving is NOT a Process
To hell with "the grieivng process." Grief does not have to follow any sort of process. "Process" implies a linear continuum, with a clearly delineated start and finish. People in grief - especially severe grief - rarely experience such tidy bereavement. In reality, grief can be messy, going in all sorts of different directions, and doesn't give a damn about process or clunky psychiatric definitions. And that's okay. The notion of what grief is becomes expanded with each new experience of it.
YOU, a stranger in a strange land, may define your own style of grieving by living it. Take as long as you wish - the rest of your life, if you want to. Shake your fist at the sky, scream at the moon, run like an animal naked through the forest. Or be silent and dwell within. Carve the face of your loved one out of a mountaintop boulder. Take a trip, go for long walks and drives. Sleep for weeks. Have lucid dreams. Make the world your church. Cry every day, hard, for two years. Sail a small boat to the tropics. Write a book. Learn how to make your own mayonnaise. Throw paint at canvasses. Whatever! Just don't be concerned about following any process. Be depressed when you want to, sing when you want to, talk to yourself, go to poetry slams, float in the kiddie pool all day, have your wife make an ice cream sundae on your head.
Just do it your way. And by doing so, who knows - maybe you'll find reasons to keep going. By doing so, you'll expand the possibilities of living, not only for yourself, but for all of us, giving us the inspiration to explore this indefinable, painful, sacred experience as each of us sees fit. As each of us deserves. And the great Book of Life will add chapters for every single human being, chapters that are part of the ever-evolving manual, the only manual on bereavement that is worthy of reading.
Grieve! Live! You! Here! Now!
YOU, a stranger in a strange land, may define your own style of grieving by living it. Take as long as you wish - the rest of your life, if you want to. Shake your fist at the sky, scream at the moon, run like an animal naked through the forest. Or be silent and dwell within. Carve the face of your loved one out of a mountaintop boulder. Take a trip, go for long walks and drives. Sleep for weeks. Have lucid dreams. Make the world your church. Cry every day, hard, for two years. Sail a small boat to the tropics. Write a book. Learn how to make your own mayonnaise. Throw paint at canvasses. Whatever! Just don't be concerned about following any process. Be depressed when you want to, sing when you want to, talk to yourself, go to poetry slams, float in the kiddie pool all day, have your wife make an ice cream sundae on your head.
Just do it your way. And by doing so, who knows - maybe you'll find reasons to keep going. By doing so, you'll expand the possibilities of living, not only for yourself, but for all of us, giving us the inspiration to explore this indefinable, painful, sacred experience as each of us sees fit. As each of us deserves. And the great Book of Life will add chapters for every single human being, chapters that are part of the ever-evolving manual, the only manual on bereavement that is worthy of reading.
Grieve! Live! You! Here! Now!
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