How Grief Changes People
Whether your loss is anticipated or completely unexpected, grief will take many shapes and forms. Here, I’m going to share some brief stories of how grief has changed the lives of some of the people I’ve supported.
Some of these stories may sound familiar. Some may sound completely opposite of your experience. Whether they resonate or not, reading them can help conceptualize your own grief journey, providing insight and perspective for your healing process.
Hopefully, one or more of these stories is common to your experience. If so, it can help to ease loneliness. Loneliness is one of the things that makes grief more painful. By easing loneliness, grief will feel less of a burden and more manageable.
Jan’s Grief Story
The first story is about Jan. She’s widowed. She lost her husband to cancer in 2009. Jan used to be a chatty Cathy. She loved meeting friends for coffee and catching up on all the happenings with friends’ families. She was also involved in her kids’ PTA association. She loved being at all the sports activities, rooting kids on, and connecting with other parents.
When Jan’s husband, Keith, died from cancer, things instantly changed. She stopped going outside. She didn’t answer or return phone calls. Jan took solace and safety in her bedroom closet, where it was dark and quiet. For the first six months after her husband’s death, she spent almost every day in her bedroom closet.
Pretty much every family friend lost touch and moved on with their lives. Jan grieved and mourned for several years. She took to writing to help her mourning. She told me it was easier to write something to someone than it was to speak it to them. Email became her only way to keep in touch.
Jan made it clear to me that words are less meaningful now. To her, a lot of verbal communication sounds more like noise than anything else.
Jan’s more comfortable with silence. For Jan, being silent helps to honor her special love, Keith.
Jan also believes that silence helps slow things down. She claims the world is moving too fast. Technology makes everyone too busy these days. But Jan sits in silence and finds herself being more intentional with how she spends her time.
I like how Jan holds space for silence. By doing so, she keeps a special connection to Keith. He may not be here physically but he’s quite present in her thoughts. Jan is grieving and healing by letting silence be a mutual bond between her late husband and herself.
Katie’s Grief Story
Katie knows she is a direct communicator. She doesn’t really use a filter and pretty much speaks what’s on her mind. Many would say she’s quite opinionated. She would rebuttal, with claims that she tells it like it is.
After Katie’s mother passed, her friends set unsupportive boundaries with her. They didn’t want to talk about death. They wanted to have fun, laugh, and be silly.
Katie didn’t. For a while she tried to fit in and keep her before loss identity within her social group. But she recognized in her young life that her inner world was the complete opposite of her external world. She felt lost.
She tried to connect with friends in more 1:1 ways to have deeper and more supportive conversations for her grief. Unfortunately, she didn’t get much support.
A few months after her mother’s death, she was at a party and had a big falling out with her friends. She decided to end the friendships. She was so angry and hurt that her feelings of grief were not welcome in any type of social setting. For Katie and her pain, being by herself was healthier than pretending everything was fine.
She spent a lot of time in isolation, keeping a diary and writing daily letters to her mom.
Her dad wasn’t into talking about grief and she is an only child so she also sought grief counseling. In counseling she learned that her grief needed space and the sessions provided a safe outlet for expression.
She mourned the loss of her mother and also mourned the loss of her friends. She found ways to ease her loneliness. She changed her lifestyle and started working for a community driven non-profit organization.
Years later Katie became a grief counselor herself. She has worked for hospice for over 10 years. She makes sure that for every person she supports, they understand and accept that a death of someone special can also bring about losses in friendships and other meaningful relationships.
For some, talking about death seems forbidden. If death and grief are shared, it creates a separation of people who can tolerate hearing it from those who can’t. Don’t be surprised if you grow apart or lose touch with people who were once close to you.
Cindy’s Grief Story
Grief is the consequence of loving so much.
William and Cindy had 37 years of love and happiness together. Cindy always knew she would outlive William, mostly because he had heart disease. For several years, she prepared as much as she could to be widowed. She got more involved in her church, increased her volunteering hours, and tried to talk to her kids about their father’s health.
When William died, she fell into a deep depression that completely consumed her. The hole in her heart was so large she felt helpless.
She didn’t care about her church community anymore. She stopped volunteering. She also got into arguments with her children.
Cindy felt helpless for quite a while. For 2 years, her bedroom became a dark cave of grief. Pretty much all she did was cry and think of William.
Cindy felt abandoned, lonely, and betrayed by life itself. She also felt like life had no purpose and meaning. She admits that although she wasn’t suicidal, she did want to die.
She came to believe that her grief was a consequence of loving so much. There was no other way she could see it. She didn’t feel like God had punished her but she did think about all the joyful loving times she and William had.
As she told me once, “Now I’m paying my debt for love.” I’ll admit that it was very somber and difficult to hear that from her. Instead of trying to convince her otherwise, I supported her in finding ways to do something about her feelings and beliefs. She just couldn’t go on living in her grief cave.
Cindy took to drawing her memories with William. She revisited photo albums and then redrew the images with colored pencils. She also drew straight from memory. She ended up drawing every day for almost 4 years. The process helped her come to terms with the pain of her grief.
I personally believe the act of drawing was a catalyst for her mourning process. The drawing was something new and it helped integrate these immense feelings into her life going forward.
Cindy still draws and she’s very thankful for artistic expression and the creative process to help with her grief journey.
Reid’s Grief Story
The last mini story I want to share is from a personal experience of my own. When I was 11 years old, I experienced my first personal loss of a loved one. Well, it was actually two- within a month of each other. I had just started 5th grade. Before September was over, a friend died from spinal meningitis. A month later, my maternal grandfather died.
I was a sensitive and quiet boy. As an adult looking back, I don’t think I said too much about my grief because I was overwhelmed with filtering and sorting through feelings from other people in addition to my own.
I remember sitting in a pew at my grandfather’s wake, everything around me looking dark and hazy, and telling myself I’m supposed to be sad because everyone else looked and seemed that way. But then after the service was complete, a meal was hosted at my grandmother’s house and I was completely confused because people were then laughing, eating, and expressing joy.
I remember thinking “What happened to all the sadness? Is it over now?”
But months later, I watched my mom mourn through her artwork. She processed grief through creative expression.
I went back to the memories of being at the memorial service, the community gathering afterward, and the grief in our household. For quite some time, I tried to connect the dots of all the emotions involved.
Of course it took me many years to understand, but I learned grief can be a combination of many opposing emotions. Joy, happiness, sadness, anger, and even fear can all co-exist. It’s okay to be happy one moment and sad the next. That’s a natural process for grief to adhere to.
I’ve seen so many people feel guilt for having joyful feelings at times that they think they’re supposed to only feel sad. The guilt doesn’t have to be perceived as an absolute truth. If you are able to recognize feelings of guilt because you think you’re only supposed to feel a certain way, please revisit your expectation. Are you feeling guilt because your joy seems to be untimely? If so, tell yourself that joy, sadness, and any other feelings involved can all co-exist in your grief.
In conclusion, I hope one or more of these stories help you feel more comfortable and accepting of your own grief journey. Sometimes we can be really hard on ourselves and that can put a damper on our grief and mourning process. It helps to hear stories of others. It helps to hear the hardships, struggles, wins, and triumphs to feel more accepting of your own grief.
Keep grieving authentically. It’s your key to healing and wholeness.
Reid Peterson is the Creator of the Grief Refuge app. Grief Refuge is a daily companion to help support people on the grief journey. Download for free on iOS or Android to get daily support.
