Loss and grief are universal.  Every one of us will encounter both at some point in our lives.  The loss may look different from person to person whether it be the loss of a loved one, of a job, of a home, of a community, of our health, or of a dream.  The loss will be painful and it might threaten to grind our growth and progress to a screeching halt.  Here are six practices to help you move through the pain and continuing living.

Orient Yourself to Your New Reality  

After the shock of losing Henry began to wear off, we found ourselves spending too much time in the “What if?” and “If only. . .” zone, so we started each day saying to each other, “Henry is dead.  What do we do now?”  This wasn’t meant to be callous or sadistic, and it was piercingly painful to verbalize, but it helped wrench us from living in the past.  Playing the “What if?” game starts out feeling productive, but it isn’t. It’s a prison trapping you in the past and rendering you useless in the present.  It’s like hopping on a carousel horse.  When the ride begins, you think you are going somewhere only to find yourself exactly where you started moments later.  The past is a land where you cannot affect change.  You cannot help anyone, including yourself.

By focusing on “What do we do now?” we can be effective and productive.  We can grow through our pain. We can help others grow through theirs.  We can honor the memory of our loved one by creating a legacy that will outlive them.  We can look at the devestation of our past as a new beginning. We can understand that our life has purpose and that we still have roles to play, roles in which we are irreplaceable. Our children need parents, our parents need children, our husbands need their wives and vice versa, and our friends need their friends.  Invest in others.  No matter how we might be feeling, we are needed and our purpose needs to be fulfilled.

Journal

Keep a journal of your thoughts and feelings.  Be completely raw and vulnerable, holding back nothing.  If it helps to write to someone – be it God or yourself – then do that. Use color, use angry lettering, write one sentence over and over again – just write what is in your mind and in your heart.  Over time you will find that it’s easier to identify and organize your thoughts and feelings.  In intense grief, I’ve found both that nothing scares or bothers me because it doesn’t compare to the loss I’ve already suffered, or that everything scares or bothers me because my “defenses” have been obliterated by the initial loss.  Journaling has helped me recognize what the overriding feeling, thought, or fear is at the moment, and keep it in perspective when it threatens to overwhelm.

Feel Your Feelings, but Do Not Live in Them

Allow time in each day to feel whatever it is you are feeling. Schedule the time in if you have to. For me, that time ends up being in the shower.  Maybe it’s because that is one of the few times of the day in which I am alone. Sometimes the feelings are sweet. I recall specific memories of Henry and live in them for a moment.  I imagine what he might look like now or what kinds of toys he would be interested in. I imagine how his voice would sound when he would call my name, or when he might boss his older sister and brother around. I imagine how he would accept his baby sister.  Those thoughts are bitter sweet.  Sometimes the feelings hurt.  They put a vice grip around my heart and squeeze until I can’t breathe.  I jump back into the “What if?” game.  I relive the moment I found him in his crib.  I imagine changing a million steps in that day that all magically leave Henry alive at the end of it.  I cry, sometimes I might even scream.  I ask, “Why?” a hundred times. As hard as it is,  I allow myself to feel these emotions and entertain these thoughts for a specified time. Then I remind myself of “what is” and the only choice I have to make – what do I do now?

Our feelings will always be there.  They will change like the wind, triggered by a picture, a song, a smell, a memory.  But we are not a boat without a rudder, destined to be tossed about in whatever direction the wind decides to blow.  We can set our course and use the wind to help us follow it.  Feel your feelings, but do not allow them to direct your course.

Look for Joy and Be Grateful

Take time and intentionally notice the joy and beauty all around you.  It is there and it is just as real and as big as the pain you feel.  Often the loss we experience is so large, it darkens every aspect of our lives.  We can’t see any beauty in the world through our opaque cloud of grief.  But even though we cannot see it, it is there.  A friend who also lost a precious child shared with me a conversation she had with her counselor. “My life just sucks!” she said. The counselor responded, “Yes, this part of your life does suck.  But there are many other parts of your life that do not.”

Start small if you have to.  Make yourself notice the blue sky, the bright sun, the green grass and wildflowers, the birds chirping, the wind, the ocean waves, the majestic mountains. Focus on the shelter over your head, the food you are eating, the friends and family around your table and be thankful for them.  Remember the love you shared with your loved one.  The pain would not cut so deeply if the love between you wasn’t just as deep. Catalogue the skills you learned in the job you lost.  Compare the person you were before to the person you are now and decide what changes were for the better and which ones were not.

It is true that this world is filled with hatred, suffering, fear and pain.  They are not hard to find.  They are all over the news, depicted in movies, and described in novels.  But the world is also filled with love, joy, support and beauty. They are often not widely advertised or discussed, but when you start looking for them, they are easily found.

I have read so many accounts of suffering people – people in concentration camps, people suffering religious persecution, people in prison unjustly, people who lost multiple loved ones, people who have lost all access to their own bodies due to tragic accidents.  In all the accounts I have read, these sufferers used their pain to make them better and they persisted to find joy, beauty and hope in the world despite their pain.  If it is possible for these people to find joy, then I’m willing to bet it is possible for you to find joy.

Surround Yourself with Supportive and Honest Friends

As strong as you may be, you need support from friends who love you, who want the best for you, and who will hold you accountable when you need it. Find friends who you trust, and then trust them.  Be open with how you feel, with your fears and your thoughts.  Often when friends would reach out to me, I didn’t know what to tell them to do.  All I wanted was my happy past restored, and they couldn’t really help me with that. Everything they offered felt like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. I stepped back and accepted what they offered. They made us dinner.  They took our kids for ice-cream. They bought us books and gifts.  They met me for coffee, played weekly bridge games, took me to lunch, walked with me, filled my house with encouraging scripture and quotes.  They remembered Henry and talked about him.  After a time, I realized how much comfort and support they provided.  It was less about the actual deeds and more the fact that they loved us enough to hurt with us and walk beside us through our own valley.  I felt like they had built scaffolding around our family and were holding us up when we couldn’t stand on our own.

Believe in an All-Powerful, Loving God and That There is Purpose in Your Pain

Someone told me shortly after Henry’s death that it was nice I had my religion because it was a good consolation.  The statement didn’t sit well with me and I’m not sure why.  Maybe it is because my faith has little to do with religion and everything to do with an all-powerful and loving God.  It could also be because my faith doesn’t make the pain go away.  It doesn’t give me back what I lost.  It doesn’t really provide comfort in the way that I’d like to have comfort.  It doesn’t even protect me from experiencing significant loss in the future.  It doesn’t have the effect that Novocain does at the dentist or that an oven mitt has while holding a scalding cast iron skillet.

What it does give me, however, is much deeper and longer lasting than anything earth can provide.  It gives me hope:  hope that my suffering is not in vain, hope that it can make me better or can help someone else, hope that it can be used for good.

It is universal and inescapable that in our lives we will experience both joy and pain.  Faith in God and the sacrifice He made when He sent his son Jesus to die on the cross and then rise again, means that He has overcome this suffering and pain.  He has overcome death! He has forged a way for us to suffer with joy in the hope that it will end, and at the end of our suffering we will not have our simple and finite happy past restored, but we will have an eternal future more fulfilling and beautiful than anything we have experienced in the past or that we can imagine.

Our daily choices and practices will forge our way through grief.  We can choose to live in the past and become useless in the present, or we can invest in others and affect positive change now.  We can suppress our feelings, or we can feel and work through them. We can focus on what we lost and how our lives do not look like what we dreamed they would, or we can focus on the joy around us and what we have with gratitude.  We can grieve alone, or we can allow others to help share our burdens.  We can suffer without hope, or we can suffer with purpose and an eternal hope.

The choice is ours to make today and everyday.