Grief After Loss

[00:00:02] Hey, Better Days family. Welcome to Better Days podcast season nine. This season of the Better Days podcast, we're going to talk about different aspects of mental health and suffering. Throughout these episodes, we're going to lay a theological framework for each topic, flesh out misunderstandings that we sometimes hold,

[00:00:20] and offer practical advice and tips to help you along in your journey through mental health and suffering. We're going to be joined by various friends that I'm so glad are sharing their expertise and advice on these important and valuable conversations.

[00:00:39] If you're new to Better Days, we're a nonprofit seeking to bring hope, awareness and education to all things mental health and suffering. We help churches, people and leaders understand the intersection between mental health and suffering and following Jesus.

[00:00:53] For more content from Better Days or to support our work, check out our website, betterdaysfmy.co. Let's jump into this week's episode. Last season, we did an episode on grief in a general sense that it was our most listened to episode.

[00:01:13] And I imagine because so many people have grief in their life and grief can take form in many different situations. So, today I would love to talk like 30,000 foot view again, like what is grief, like the healthy nature of grief.

[00:01:31] And then a couple of situations that I found people asking me about that we would have a discussion in our next season of Better Days podcast.

[00:01:41] So, I'm going to pass the ball to somebody that knows and understands the nuances of grief better than all of us, Dr. Stephanie Koehn. Yeah, so I think the broadest definition of grief is just an emotional response to loss.

[00:01:56] That's just the simplest way to really describe a very complex experience. And then how is it that people experience grief? What is it like to experience grief? And that's where it gets complicated.

[00:02:09] And it can be in some ways a collective experience, in other ways, a very personal and unique experience. Processing loss. And when we're talking about if we go broad with it, we can talk about the loss of many different things.

[00:02:23] We typically go to loss through death, which is a profound loss. And we certainly want to spend time processing that. Additionally, people experience different types of loss that provide, that also bring in a strong emotional response.

[00:02:39] The loss of a relationship, the loss of a job, the loss of a physical ability that may lead to a disability, the loss of a sense of safety.

[00:02:49] You know, right now we're looking at news and we're looking around the world and there's so many people who live in countries that are war torn or people here who have families and people who they love in those areas and that loss of that sense of security.

[00:03:01] And there's just all types of financial stability, all types of different losses that we experience. All that to say that on some level, all of us experience grief. All of us have an emotional response to loss at a different level.

[00:03:14] But there are different types of situations that usher in a very deep and grueling and devastating feeling of grief. Yeah. And grief is something that the Bible talks about frequently. Right. There's an entire book of the Bible called Lamentations to lament or to have this sense of grief.

[00:03:33] Jesus is aware of what grief looks like. He has a friend named Lazarus die. He's going to raise him back to the dead. But Jesus wept. So grief is a universal experience that we all have.

[00:03:43] And I think that the difficult thing about just loss is how disorienting it can be. You're with someone one day and the next day they're gone. And human beings, if you think about the garden experience, were never meant to experience loss. It was never part of God's design.

[00:04:03] It was never part of the experience that we were supposed to have. And so in some ways, no matter how much we experience it, it's still this foreign experience that we have where someone who we valued is now gone or something that we valued is now gone.

[00:04:18] So grief can be extremely disorienting, extremely challenging. But it is a universal experience that I think we can, as we talk about it, help us to get through it. But you never, I would say, overcome it.

[00:04:33] Like people who experience extreme losses of children or family members or friends. It's something that's going to be a part of you for the rest of your life. But how do you live in the midst of that?

[00:04:44] You know, I found fascinating just teaching through the Bible all the years I've been teaching the Bible. There's a couple passages that talk about how we can grieve God, which means God feels grief. That's an interesting thought to process through.

[00:05:00] The fact that, like in the New Testament, there's a passage, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. And the term means to make sad. Yeah. Which is so interesting that we can do things that bring grief to the heart of God.

[00:05:14] It's as though God's saying, what you're doing is the opposite of what I intended. I want you to flourish, but this is causing destruction or pain. And so, that's something to process through is like God feels grief and then God encourages us to feel grief.

[00:05:33] Like Matthew 4, verse 4, blessed are those who mourn. This is Jesus. He's saying, blessed, like Makarios, happy are those who mourn. There's something good for our soul when we grieve, like something healthy in response to what we experience on this earth.

[00:05:52] Like Jesus is called a man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief.

[00:05:57] And that was his story in his incarnation while he was on this earth, living and breathing and relating and all the things of life that you intersect with living life as a human in God who became flesh and dwelt among us. Yeah.

[00:06:11] I want to say something else just from a 30,000 foot view about grief. I think one of the difficult things about it is it just shows up unannounced. It just arrives in the middle of the day, crashes the party and boom, you're filled with grief.

[00:06:23] This comedian, his name's Kevin on stage, made a post that was funny but also sad at the same time.

[00:06:29] He lost his brother a couple years ago and he was talking about how he just does everyday, ordinary things and it reminds him of his brother and boom, instantly grief shows up. And I think that's the experience with grief. It's like surprise, I'm here.

[00:06:42] And what do you do when that happens? Because it can send your day into a tailspin. So how do you handle that? Those would be some of the things we discussed on this show. There's no life after grief. There's living with grief. Yeah, that is a great statement.

[00:06:58] Like we should pause everybody, write that down, memorize it like so valuable. Yeah, it stays with you. It's a part of you. Yeah. So it's interesting.

[00:07:08] Like when we talk about grief now specifically, a lot of questions we got about loss of relationship, you know, that could be death. Anticipated or unanticipated.

[00:07:19] That could be a loss of like a family relationship, maybe just a severing of relationship, you know, parent, child or, you know, siblings don't talk anymore, what have you. That could be divorce. So specifically when somebody loses a relationship, that's what's called a crisis. Yeah.

[00:07:39] That's a major life disruption. Yeah. Attachment is such a big part of the human experience, of the interconnectedness that we have with one another. And attachment starts from birth. We're connecting with our parents. We're creating that bond with our caretakers, whoever that may be.

[00:07:58] And that fosters that sense of self. We're going to spend a lot of time in this season talking about, you know, our sense of self, the value that we have with ourselves as well. And that attachment fosters that.

[00:08:08] What happens when through loss, there's a detachment that occurs, when there's a disruption in the attachment and that interconnectedness, that emotional intimacy, that social connection, spiritual connection, the bond that you have with another human being is broken either permanently through death or through a decision.

[00:08:27] And how do you live with life with a circumstance that you have lost complete control over? You can't get that person back. You can't make that person come back. There's no will in you to make that come back. And that's why there's never after grief.

[00:08:42] There's just, how do you live with grief in life in a way that you can still enjoy life and connect with the other people in your life? I'm just spending time.

[00:08:51] I just want to just leave it at that and just say, just acknowledging that it is a human experience, that there is not a cure for it, but there is a way to manage it so that it doesn't take over your life and rip you of your joy and your peace and the abundant life that God wants you to have.

[00:09:12] Yeah. When you go through a crisis, a major loss of relationship, you know, death, divorce, I learned that there's phases, stages to a crisis. That as far as like a paradigm, it's helpful to know, oh yeah, that's where I'm at right now.

[00:09:32] And then hopefully like down the road, I'm going to get to another stage and feel a little different about this moment.

[00:09:41] So, just for like healthy information, I think this is really good to understand and know if you're walking through the loss of a relationship that when you initially have that severing, that loss, that disruption of relationship in a crisis, that's called the impact phase.

[00:10:02] So, that's where you're feeling the fight, flight, freeze, all of these things that like you're just, you're in shock really. And that's your initial response is like this disorientation, overwhelming. You don't even know how to narrate what just happened inside of you. You're just in shock.

[00:10:22] And that's really normal for people when you go through this type of crisis to start there. Do you have anything to elaborate on that like initial response? It's a disorienting experience.

[00:10:34] And then what happens is your brain gets over, your whole system gets overloaded and you find that it's hard for you to do even simple things, rituals that you used to do, making decisions. What am I going to wear today? Wait, what am I supposed to do today?

[00:10:50] You become forgetful. You're not able to do things that you were able to do. People are expecting you to, oh, how do I send an email? So be prepared and accept where you are in that and that life is going to feel very overwhelming.

[00:11:07] Not because there's something wrong with you, but because there has been a shock to your system that to your point has destabilized you and everything in your system, all your gears are just alerting you that this hurts. This is bad.

[00:11:21] This is a completely different way that you're experiencing life right now. And so it's going to take some time for you to assimilate back into life and to start taking on responsibilities. And I know that everyone doesn't have the privilege of taking time off.

[00:11:38] That's a luxury that some people have where they can say, I can take time off and I can just focus on healing. A lot of you just you got to go to work. You have responsibilities or maybe you're a single parent.

[00:11:51] Maybe you lost a spouse and you have children to take care of. And it's you, you're the one that has to do all of these things and it makes it hard.

[00:11:58] So I would say give yourself compassion and grace and accept that you're going to make a lot of mistakes and it's going to be messy. Maybe it's going to be actually visually messy. Your house is going to be messy. You're going to feel messy.

[00:12:11] Maybe it's just going to be emotionally messy. Accept that as part of the process and give yourself grace in that. The second phase is withdrawal confusion phase. So first you're in shock. And now some people, they feel intense emotions and some people they get numb emotionally.

[00:12:33] And it's different for everyone. Like we all process grief uniquely and differently. And in this phase, it's like you're walking through the valley. Like you're weary, like you're withdrawn a little bit. You're confused. You're either feeling intense emotions or you're numb emotionally. Talk about that.

[00:12:53] Like when people get into that like phase of grief and crisis. These are survival mechanisms. Your body and your mind makes a decision about what do you need in order to survive, to exist in this?

[00:13:07] And sometimes it's you need to just avoid it completely and not feel anything and act like it's not happening. Or it's that you need to just try to disappear, try to get away from it all. So that's part of an adaptive response to what you're experiencing.

[00:13:24] And it's a very lonely place to be. It's a very confusing place to be. And in that time, it's hard to really connect with people, to really articulate what's happening to you. Because sometimes these things are they sneak up on you.

[00:13:41] You don't realize that you've numbed things away. You know, you think that, oh, I'm just people are looking at you. And this is for the people who are coming alongside people who are there as an observer of people going through grief. They're doing great.

[00:13:54] Oh, they're showing up for work. They're doing this or doing that. And, you know, and you just assume that they've that they're dealing with it in a way that is healthy. And it could be that they're adapting to it. And there's going to be another response coming ahead.

[00:14:09] So even as you are experiencing maybe avoidance, numbness, maybe you withdrawing, that is a temporary state. I don't know how long that temporary state is, but there's going to be another state that comes in.

[00:14:24] And so recognizing the state that you're in and what's helpful to you is if you have people to go against the grain, that state with you, because you you're going to want to be alone all the time, maybe.

[00:14:39] Maybe you're going to want to busy yourself and get over involved in things.

[00:14:44] But it's good to have people who who you trust, who you love, who can enter into that place and say, I know you want to be alone, but I'm going to be here to check in on you. I'm still going to be in here with you in that.

[00:14:55] I know you're busying yourself in all of these things, but I'm going to probably be that person to take that hard step and tell you you're doing too much right now. Yeah. The third phase is the adjustment phase where you begin to be hopeful again.

[00:15:11] You have some hopeful emotions. You see for the first time, like in the cloudiness of your loss, where everything seems dim and confusing, you start to see future possibilities and you begin to have positive thoughts like new and hope become a reality in this phase.

[00:15:30] What what we first of all, everything you're articulating, I think is really helpful for people because most people don't have the words to express what they're going through. So this is like gold, so valuable. So when a person begins to adjust, like what do you see?

[00:15:49] I love the term adjustment because what adjustment doesn't imply that the thing is gone is now you've learned how to live around it, what you do with it. So it's still in the room. The loss is still very much part of your life.

[00:16:07] But now you've learned how to navigate your life in that.

[00:16:10] And one of the, I'd say, key indicators that you're in the adjustment stage is when you're starting to engage in your relationships and connect with people who you've had relationships with before or new people in a healthy way.

[00:16:24] When you're it's risky when you have lost a person and you've lost a relationship that's so deep to you and you experiencing the hurt of that loss.

[00:16:33] It's hard to think about taking the risk of connecting with another person or investing in a relationship that you've also connected with because you are very aware of the reality of what that loss of that person would be like.

[00:16:49] And so the phase two part tells you withdraw, don't connect with people so you don't feel this hurt again. But the adjustment is when you're willing to take risks again, where you say connecting with people, experiencing love, experiencing intimacy, experiencing friendship.

[00:17:07] The risk is worth the reward of having that connection.

[00:17:10] When you're starting to take risks in your life, putting yourself out there again in a way that you know that you could be entering into the possibility of a loss, but you're not going to let that keep you from engaging. Really good. So helpful.

[00:17:26] And then the final phase is the reconstruction phase. It's like my life will never be the same, right? Like you're always going to feel that loss, but you begin to have a sense of confidence in the future. There's new attachments.

[00:17:41] There's maybe even new goals and purposes in your life. You're basically, you're reconstructing from the ashes of that crisis, a new life and a new world per se for you. And this is an important part.

[00:17:57] And it kind of goes alongside what we were talking about, the five stages of grief, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, how they wrote the five stages. And then David Kessler wrote a book later on says, we were missing a stage, the sixth stage, finding meaning in grief.

[00:18:16] This is this. This is, I've had this crisis and I've gone through this valley and I'm reemerging. And I actually see that there's meaning and new attachments and a new possibilities and even maybe a new direction for my life that is beautiful and right and good. Yeah.

[00:18:34] And I think this is a testament just to the human will that is connected with God, how people experience horrible, horrific losses. I mean, we're pastors. So we meet people who have gone through genocides in countries or lost a loved one, lost a spouse, lost a child.

[00:18:51] And you meet them years later and they have reconstructed a life, not where they've forgotten about this person, but where they have been able to excel despite the experience that they've had, which is remarkable.

[00:19:02] A remarkable level of resilience that people are able to show when they go through this.

[00:19:06] And I think the message is, while there is not life after grief, it is possible for you to experience the joy of life after you've gone through such a traumatic soul stripping experience where, man, yes, I can make it through what I'm experiencing.

[00:19:25] It's always going to be a part of me, but I also have this life that's worth living again. And for those who are in the midst of grief right now, maybe it's something fresh for you.

[00:19:35] Just look at the example of other human beings who have gone down the rock before you experienced loss and they've been able to live a life that was productive, find brand new meaning and excel in life. And so that should give you just a measure of hope.

[00:19:51] Right now, it may be dark in the room you're in. It may feel like the clouds are all over, but the sun will shine through. I love that, Jason. Yeah, it's not about getting back to the life that you had.

[00:20:02] It's not about you going back to the person who you were, because you might find people tell you that like, you're different. You know, remember how you were this and that and all of this stuff? It's about creating a new thing, a new life.

[00:20:15] You have a new perspective. You've become a new person on the other side of this. And with newness is obscurity. You don't know. You don't necessarily know what it looks like.

[00:20:26] Maybe one thing about death, even if it was someone who was dying of an illness, but just the fact that that illness showed up and all those things shows you that it's a day to day journey.

[00:20:38] You don't have to preplan what this new life looks like, because I think that having an unexpected loss or maybe you expected the loss, but just how you experienced it, your grief after was unexpected.

[00:20:53] You never know. You can't plan of what that's going to be like, makes you want to respond by way of creating a life with as minimal surprises as possible.

[00:21:05] So you want to plan and try to say, OK, what plan do I have in place that I can follow in order in this new life? How can I actually go ahead and plan out this new life so I know what to expect?

[00:21:18] And that's just not the reality. I think the new lesson from that, from all of us and for those of you who have experienced grief, is that everything can't be planned. Some things you just have to experience day by day.

[00:21:29] And so it's taking it day by day in that reconstruction. How am I going to show up today? And then looking back at this new way of showing up. And from that, you're going to develop. You're going to find your meaning.

[00:21:41] And that meaning may be, you know, there's people who use it as a platform to speak and teach and do all those types of things. And that's awesome. That meaning in life could be just you loving life again. That is meaningful in and of itself.

[00:21:53] If you choose, if it's like, no, I'm not going to be a public speaker, I'm not writing a book, I'm not, I don't have a podcast, I'm not doing that. But I'm going to choose to live with joy, to live with peace. There's meaning in that.

[00:22:06] That is meaningful. I just want to highlight two things you said, because everything you've said in this podcast, like you all need to re-listen to this. This is really good. It's a day to day journey. Yeah.

[00:22:17] So, if you're looking a week in advance, it might be too overwhelming. Right. And then live again. Like, both of you emphasize that.

[00:22:27] I just think that is such valuable advice that there's going to come a point where you realize, I have life to live and it's never going to be the same. And I still will feel this loss. I'm not going to forget it.

[00:22:40] People say, you know, have you healed from this? Are you well again? If you lose a child, you will feel that the rest of your life. That child was birthed from you. That's a part of who you are, like your story.

[00:22:56] You're never going to not feel grief about that. And grief is like the rain. Yeah. All of a sudden you walk outside and it's there. And then the next day there's sun. Yeah. You know, it's like weather conditions in Oregon.

[00:23:07] You just never know what you're going to get. And it comes and goes and never feel ashamed in any moment to feel that grief and never feel guilty for finding joy in life again. Right. And I think both of those things happen.

[00:23:25] We feel ashamed if we continue to grieve at different moments. And we feel ashamed or guilty that we actually have joy and new attachments again. Joy and new attachments is really healthy for all of us as we process through loss.

[00:23:40] So any last advice that you can think of? No, I think we hit the nail on the head with this one. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing conversation. Much love to you both.

[00:23:51] And we just pray and hope for a hopeful future of feeling alive and strength and perseverance in walking through the day by day crisis realities that you're facing. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:24:08] We would love for you to help in spreading the word about Better Days podcast so that we can bring hope and help to people navigating mental health challenges or suffering of any kind.

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[00:24:37] There are better days ahead.