Good Grief
How to deal with loss when you don’t believe in an afterlife
Grief is the process of transitioning someone we’ve lost from being with us physically to being only in our memories.
This kind of grief happens when we lose a loved one or a beloved pet. This can also happen when we lose a close relationship, get divorced, or become estranged from a family member. We can even pre-grieve a person who has a terminal illness, and then grieve someone when that person dies. Grief can also be for intangible things, like high school seniors grieving the lack of their graduation ceremonies because of Covid-19.
Even if you and I are grieving the same thing or person, my grief can look a lot different than yours. Some grief manifests itself with physical symptoms like headache, back pain, sleeping too much/too little, or eating too much/too little. Some grief leads us to seek relief from drugs and alcohol. Some grief makes us want to be swallowed up in the ground and be alone forever.
I have experienced a few of these forms of grief. I have experienced grief as a religious person and also as a non-religious person. Both sides of this grief coin were painful and filled with ups and downs.
Yet, I feel like my non-religious grief has had a much more healing experience and taught me to be a better…
