Grief is associated with the period after a death or traumatic change in a person’s life. But when the grieving process starts long before the actual loss, it’s called anticipatory grief.
“Anticipatory grief is the collective thoughts, feelings, and emotions we have before a loss occurs,” Diane P. Brennan, LMHC, founder of Life & Loss Mental Health Counseling in NYC, tells Health. Here’s what to know about anticipatory grief, and why it’s different from regular grieving.
Types of anticipatory grief
Though anticipatory grief is used as a general term, it doesn’t have a single, precise definition, M. Katherine Shear, MD, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University and director of the Center for Complicated Grief, tells Health.
“It’s used in different ways by different authors,” Dr. Shear says. One Frontiers in Psychiatryarticle defines it as “expectations and emotions” associated with fear of losing a loved one. A review in The Family Journal describes it as “uncertainty, fear, and sadness associated with expecting the impending loss of a loved one which can lead to adverse health outcomes.”
Anticipatory grief also refers to “pre-death grief” in the context of a terminal illness in which there are already losses. For example, the ill person no longer has the same physical, mental, or social functioning, says Dr. Shear. Or there has been a loss of reciprocity in the relationship or plans for the future.
Preparatory grief, the grief experienced by dying patients related to loss of their own life, is another type of anticipatory grief. “This is often misunderstood as grief related to bereavement,” Dr. Shear says.
Anticipatory grief vs “regular” grief
The big difference between anticipatory grief and regular grief is that anticipatory grief occurs before the loss, while regular grief occurs after the loss, explains Brennan.
For example, someone may experience anticipatory grief when a person they love is diagnosed with a terminal illness. “We know they will die from it, so we begin to anticipate the loss and experience grief starting at the time of the diagnosis,” Brennan says. Another example of anticipatory grief is when someone is expecting layoffs at work, or preparing for the breakup of a close relationship.
While the grief felt before a death or other type of loss is not necessarily less intense as grief experienced afterward, it may come with some particular challenges. First of all, not everyone experiences anticipatory grief in the same way. Those who are trying to come to terms with their loved one’s imminent death may struggle with the idea of letting them go, while holding onto hope that they won’t actually die, for instance.
What anticipatory grief can feel like
Generally, it may not be particularly helpful to try to split the grieving process into defined stages. “I often begin talks by saying that grief is universal but how we define it is not,” says Dr. Shear. “That said, there is general consensus in the field that grief can be defined as the response to a meaningful loss and that the two are inextricably linked, i.e. there is not meaningful loss without grief and no grief without meaningful loss.”
She adds that the hallmark of grief is yearning, longing, and/or frequent, insistent thoughts of the deceased or other loss.
“In general, grief is complex and variable, containing a wide range of thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and physiological changes, as well as social and spiritual responses,” Dr. Shear says. “The specifics of what we experience are unique to the grieving person and their relationship with the deceased (or other loss).”
In other words, two people grieve the loss of the same person differently and the same person grieves two different losses differently—and this is true of any form of grief.
That said, loss of a loved one is highly stressful, and there are typical early “defensive responses” that can become problematic when they persist and are overly influential in mental functioning. These include disbelief and protest, counterfactual thinking, caregiver self-blame or anger, excessive proximity seeking (efforts to escape from the painful reality), or excessive avoidance of reminders of the loss. Some of these resemble the five stages of grief model (known as the Kübler-Ross model), which theorizes that those who experience grief go through a series of five emotions: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Dealing with anticipatory grief
It’s helpful to think of grieving as a process that begins with accepting your current reality, says Dr. Shear. Another crucial step is to accept grief, including all its painful and positive emotions. If you can, reach out to a trusted friend or family member to make light of what you’re going through. Simply acknowledging what you’re feeling can make a big difference, and it may help to form connections with others who are feeling the same way.
If you’re grieving the impending loss of a loved one, it may help to find ways to spend meaningful time together, and perhaps create opportunities to have conversations you’ve been avoiding. As difficult as they may be, you don’t want to regret not telling them how you feel about them when you have the chance.
A difficult aspect of anticipatory grief is the feeling that your own life is on hold. But many people don’t feel comfortable expressing this to others, out of fear that they come across as being selfish or insensitive.
Also, it can be hard to predict when someone will die, so anticipatory grief often lasts for a long time. This can take a huge toll on the griever’s physical and mental health.
“It’s important to remember that you—the grieving person—matter too,” Dr. Shear says. This means taking care of yourself, practicing mindfulness and self-compassion, making a ritual of simple pleasant activities (like reading, having relaxing baths, and cooking yourself nice meals), and taking some time to start to plan at least one project for the future that connects with a strong personal interest or value—something you find satisfying.
Coming to terms with feelings of loss and making sense of it can be a painful process. Grief is a common emotional and sometimes physical response that you feel when you experience loss after a disaster or a traumatic event. Bereavement is a type of grief you experience when you lose a loved one.
Grief occurs across all ages, but adults, adolescents, and children may process it differently. Feelings can range from deep sadness to bursts of anger. Everyone grieves in their own way and time frame depending on the personal attachment to what was lost.
If the loss is too overwhelming to perform your day-to-day tasks, it can take a significant toll on your mental health. You may need to reach out to a professional therapist, psychologist, or a counselor to help you work through the grief.
Understanding Grief Counseling
Grief counseling is a type of professional therapy designed to help you work through the various stages and range of emotions you may feel after a loss.
How you experience grief can vary from person to person. People commonly refer to the five familiar stages of grief, initially coined in 1969 by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. They are:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
When you’re grieving, you may go through at least two of the five stages. But it is important to note that there is no common pathway for grief. Everyone experiences it differently. Your grief reactions and signs may include:
Shock
Disbelief and denial
Anxiety
Distress
Anger
Periods of sadness
Loss of sleep
Loss of appetite
Counseling will help you address some of the reactions as you process your new reality. Some people recover from grief usually within 6 months, but for some others, it may take up to a year or longer.
What Are the Different Types of Grief?
Depending on the type of loss and the belief and relationship you held, it may affect the type of grief you may experience.
Complicated Grief
With time, many overcome or learn to manage grief. But for about 15% of the people who lose a loved one, they may experience a “complicated grief.” It’s a type of grief in which you may have symptoms and signs that last for up to a year or longer.
While the intensity may vary from person to person depending on the context of the loss, the symptoms you may feel may be severe. Complicated grief may make it hard to get through your daily routine and function properly.
Severe symptoms can include:
Intense sadness and emotional pain
Feeling empty and hopeless
Yearning to be reunited with your loved one
Constantly thinking about the deceased person or how they died
Difficulty engaging in happy memories of the lost person
Avoiding anything that reminds you of the loved one
A reduced sense of identity
Detachment and isolation from friends and family
Lack of desire to make plans or have interests
Traumatic Grief
If you lose someone you care about in a traumatic event like an accident or if you witness them die or become severely injured, you could be experiencing traumatic grief. It mostly occurs when you’re unprepared to lose someone suddenly.
Symptoms of traumatic grief may creep up on you hours, days, weeks, or even months after the traumatic incidents. The feelings of grief may be very strong and frightening to deal with. If this happen to you, reach out to your doctor and seek help.
Broken Heart Syndrome
While grief is highly unlikely to kill you, the severe stress from living with it may affect your heart health in situations of sudden shock. If the grief is very intense, your body may release stress hormones that may cause part of your heart to swell and pump blood unevenly and beat irregularly. It can cause chest pains similar to a heart attack. This is called broken heart syndrome.
Most people who experience this type of grief recover in a couple of weeks and may not have a similar event again. Women are more prone to broken heart syndrome than men. Grief counseling can help you develop strategies to deal or manage grief during the recovery process.
Depression and Grief
Grief’s symptoms like lack of joy, anxiety, or sense of despair, can look a lot like depression. However, they are different. But if you’re grieving, it could trigger a depressive episode and make the process of grieving worse. Talk to a therapist or a counselor. They can come with strategies to manage depressive symptoms.
What Are the Techniques Used in Grief Counseling?
The goals of grief or bereavement counseling can include four main stages such as:
To accept the reality of the loss
To work through the pain of grief
To adjust to life without the deceased
To maintain a connection with a loved one you’ve lost while finding ways to move on with life
Psychologists or therapists may use techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy or psychotherapy to help you through the grieving process.
Techniques used in grief counseling can include:
Guiding you to talk about the loss, who the person was to you, and the circumstances surrounding the death
Asking you to describe your emotions and feelings
Building coping strategies to deal with tough days like holidays, anniversaries, or birthdays
Learning to accept that grief is a normal process and to be expected
Identifying unhealthy behaviors that may be harmful for day-to-day life
Building new relationships
Developing a new identity
If you’re grieving, it’s also important to take care of yourself. Pay attention to any physical, mental, social, or emotional stressors or signs. Don’t ignore them. Instead, let your doctor or therapist know about it.
Grief Counseling for Children
Unlike adults, kids may experience grief differently. They may not understand the loss and what it means to their reality at first. They may often look to adults on how to mourn and process their feelings. Being direct and honest with them may help them assess and accept their grief.
If a child loses a close family member, they may benefit from a counselor for children to learn to grieve in a healthy manner or also use family therapy as unit. Activities like storytelling and play may also help them understand the loss.
How Can Grief Counseling Help?
Psychologists, therapists, or grief counselors are licensed professionals who are equipped to help you deal and manage emotions of grief like anxiety, guilt, or fear that you may associate with the loss of a loved one.
They can help you build resilience and coping strategies to deal with the intense sadness you may feel throughout your grieving process and help you find ways to move on in a meaningful way.
How Can You Get Started?
If you’ve experience loss and going through the stages of grief, it’s important to know that it takes time. But if the grief is too overwhelming and is disrupting your ability to function daily, it’s best to seek professional help.
It’s never too early nor too late. However, the earlier you seek help, the sooner you can build strategies to help you cope with changes.
If you’re looking for grief counseling, it might be a good idea to check if your health insurance provider covers the cost of the sessions. If it doesn’t, you can seek more affordable options like virtual counseling, telehealth, support groups, or attend in-person meetings with others who are experiencing similar forms of grief.
There are also apps you can download that will give you access to a licensed and experienced therapist for reasonable prices.
The weekend that I graduated from law school in 2009, my mother told me that she had been diagnosed with ALS. After watching her lose the ability to speak, eat and eventually breathe, she died the following summer. After two battles with cancer, my father passed away four summers later.
Before my parents died, I was blissfully unaware of mental health. A heartbreak was the biggest challenge I had faced emotionally.
After they passed, intense sadness and anxiety filled my days. I felt physically sick thinking about how many moments I’d miss with my parents, especially that my children would never meet them.
There were only a handful of family and friends that could sit with me and just listen to my sadness. More often, when I expressed my grief, someone would immediately try to cheer me up or force a positive perspective upon me.
“You are so lucky you had such a great mom!” they would say. “How lucky you are to have had so many amazing years with your dad!” or “Your parents would want you to be happy,” were common unhelpful expressions I heard.
Other common unhelpful phrases I heard were, “Think about what you still have to be thankful for,” or any statement that started with “at least, ” like “at least she didn’t suffer any longer.”
Those phrases are unhelpful because rather than making a bereaved person feel better, they often just minimize their pain.
“When you say to somebody, ‘at least you got to say goodbye to that person,’ it makes that person that’s grieving feel like ‘I guess I shouldn’t be this sad because at least I got to do those things,'” said Sarah Kroenke, a licensed social worker and co-founder of the Grief Club of Minnesota.
It’s normal to miss someone that you loved, or someone that you had a complicated relationship with, and lost. And yet, most people encouraged me not to feel.
Because of the messages I received, I didn’t understand that grieving is a natural and normal process. I felt ashamed and alone and I often judged myself for not being able to “move on faster.”
“[Grief] doesn’t just go away. It is as unique as your fingerprint. Grief changes over time. There are no rules, there are no expectations. There is no right or wrong way,” said Kroenke.
I believe that many of the people that didn’t support me the way that I needed wanted to help, but didn’t know how.
A bouquet of roses rests at the base of a headstone.
“My experience has been that fear gets in the way of love. It’s fear of making people sad, fear of talking about loss with people and not knowing what to say. It’s fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. And it’s also fear of mortality, it’s fear of our own people we deeply love dying,” said Joanne Cacciatore, professor at Arizona State University and founder of the MISS Foundation, an organization that provides support to families struggling with traumatic grief.
Despite this fear, we must begin to recognize the grief of bereaved individuals. Unacknowledged grief can “have significant impact not only on our immediate mental wellness but on our long-term mental wellness,” Kroenke said.
Research suggests that strong social support may improve a bereaved person’s capacity to cope. But, unfortunately, my experience is not an anomaly.
According to a recent study co-authored by Cacciatore, almost 40 percent of the bereaved participants stated that they received poor or very poor social support in traumatic relief and over half indicated the desire for more emotional support. Participants discussed the importance of others listening and accepting their emotional state without trying to “fix their grief.”
It’s a “real problem when grieving people feel lonely. And they feel lonely because they feel they have nowhere where they can share their grief or their pain. They have no one who will pour over photographs and videos of their loved ones who died. People don’t want to say their name and everyone just tries to pretend it didn’t happen,” said Cacciatore.
People with good social support, of course, still grieve. But it can be easier to move through the painful feelings of grief when you have people in your life who are willing to just be there for you while you process those difficult emotions.
The intensity of my grief didn’t begin to subside until I allowed myself to feel what I was feeling and until I found people who were able to support me through my grief.
There are countless Americans grieving today. Over 600,000 Americans have died due to COVID-19. For every person who has died during this pandemic, there are nine bereaved people on average mourning.
“It takes real courage to sit with someone and just be with them in their pain, knowing that there are no words that can take away their pain,” said Kroenke.
For the sake of the mental health of bereaved persons, I hope we can all be more courageous.
“It was nice to think that Mammy was so well-liked by God, since she was a massive fan’: Séamas O’Reilly.
One of 11 children, Séamas O’Reilly was just five years old when his mother died. In an extract from his touching new memoir, he recalls with childlike clarity the awful day of her wake
One thing they don’t tell you about mammies is that when they die you get new trousers. On my first full day as a half-orphan, I remember fiddling with unfamiliar cords as Margaret held my cheek and told me Mammy was a flower. She and her husband, Phillie, were close friends of my parents and their presence is one of the few memories that survive from that period, most specifically the conversation Margaret had with me there and then. “Sometimes,” croaked Margaret in a voice bent ragged from two days’ crying, “when God sees a particularly pretty flower, He’ll take it up from Earth, and put it in his own garden.”
It was nice to think that Mammy was so well-liked by God, since she was a massive fan. She went to all his gigs – mass, prayer groups, marriage guidance meetings. She had all the action figures – small Infant of Prague statuettes, much larger Infant of Prague statuettes, little blue plastic flasks of holy water in the shape of God’s own mammy herself. So, in one sense, Margaret’s version of events was kind of comforting. It placed my mother’s death in that category of stories where people met their heroes.
As Margaret reassured me that God was an avaricious gardener intent on murdering my loved ones any time he pleased, I concentrated once more on my new corduroy slacks, summoned from the ether as if issued by whichever government department administers to the needs of all the brave little boys with dead, flowery mams – an Infant Grief Action-Pack stuffed with trousers, sensible underpants, cod liver oil tablets and a solar-powered calculator.
The cords were inordinately delightful to fiddle with, most especially when I flicked my finger up and down their pleasing grooves, stopping only each time a super-heated nail forced a change of hands. I think it’s fair to say I had no idea what was going on, save that this was all very sad and, worse, making Margaret sad. In that way of five-year-olds, I feared sadness in adults above all things, so I leaned my head upon Margaret’s shoulder to reassure her that her words had scrubbed things clean. In truth, I found the flower story unsettling. I couldn’t help picturing Mammy awakening to a frenzy of mechanical beeping as the roof caved in and God’s two great probing fingers smashed through the roof to relocate her to that odd garden he kept in heaven, presumably so he’d have something to do on Sundays.
In fact, my mother died from the breast cancer that had spun a cruel, mocking thread through her life for four years. The hospital rang my father at 3am on Thursday 17 October 1991. Their exact words went unrecorded, but the general gist was that he’d want to get there quick. I can’t imagine the horror of that morning, my father racing dawn, chain-smoking as he managed the 90-minute drive from Derry to Belfast in less than an hour. When he arrived, she had already passed. Sheila O’Reilly was dead and my father drove back to Derry as the sole parent of 11 children.
Contrary to the expectations of non-Irish people, it was highly unusual to have a family so large. My parents were formidably – perhaps recklessly – Catholic, but even among the ranks of the devout, to be one of 11 was singularly, fizzily demented. At best, you were the child of sex maniacs, at worst the creepy scions of some bearded recluse amassing weapons in the hills.
“Sometimes when God sees a particularly pretty flower, He’ll take it up from Earth, and put it in his own garden.” Séamas O’Reilly.
In some school years, it was easier to isolate the age groups in whih we did not have a representative. Even within our own home, it was necessary to erect internal subdivisions that simplified things. This we did by separating into three distinct castes, which ran in age order thus: the “Big Ones” (Sinead, Dara and Shane), the “Middle Ones” (Maeve, Orla, Mairead and Dearbhaile) and the “Wee Ones”, (Caoimhe, me, Fionnuala and Conall). When my mother died, the youngest was two. I was three weeks shy of my sixth birthday although the celebration of that was, I have been led to believe, a decidedly subdued affair.
It’s an infuriating quirk of the brain that I remember my first taste of a banana sandwich, but not the moment I was told Mammy had died. The closest I can manage must be some moments – perhaps hours – later: a clear image of walking through pyjama-clad siblings who were crying in all directions.
We’d been to see Mammy the preceding weekend. I once more find I only have very faint memories of that final visit. I can see her in bed, tired and pale, laughing through the web of tubes taped to her face like a child’s art project, but it’s impossible to know if this was on that occasion or some earlier trip. Those tubes were a common point of reference for us in the years after her death, my sister Maeve becoming convinced they’d strangled her.
Apart from that I can remember very little of that week, save that morning with Margaret and a smattering of sensations from the subsequent wake. My father had called Phillie and Margaret with the news, so they could look in on us until he returned. It also fell to them to intercept Anne, our housekeeper, a saintly woman who tended to the house and its numerous infant contents, most especially since Mammy had fallen ill. Anne was as steady as rain and implacable as taxes; the kind of strong, rooted Donegal woman you could imagine blithely tutting if her hair caught fire, but we watched as the news made even her steadfast frame crumple backward.
Family tree: the author and his 10 siblings in 1990. Séamas is looking over Conall’s shoulder.
This was, of course, a mere precursor to the sight of my father returning to sobs and screams, holding us all as we heaved, and crying loudly himself. The sight of my father crying was so dizzyingly perverse that I couldn’t have been more shocked and appalled if bats had flown out of his mouth. Daddy’s stoicism was a solid fixture in my life. This was the man who had forged time and space with his own rough hands, unafraid of heights or the dark or spiders or anything, save for being caught without some WD-40. In many ways, my father’s grief in that moment hit me harder than anything else. It would be from the wreckage of that moment that he would reassemble the universe for us.
Mammy’s body returned that afternoon and was to be waked in our home, a great big bungalow on the border of Derry and Donegal situated far out from the city so that we rarely had many visitors. Now, there were people everywhere, the life squashed out of them, all serious and nervy as they carried dishes about the place and sheepishly searched, cupboard by cupboard, for whisks or dish cloths. Over these two days we would host a throng of well-wishers who’d come to pay their respects, see how we were doing, and inevitably bring us food, plates or cutlery.
In the time-honoured tradition of all Irish crises, sandwiches were liberally distributed. Egg and onion, of course, but also ham, and not merely the thin, wet slices you got for school lunches, but the thick, rough-cut chunks of ham that still had the fat on – the type used exclusively by millionaires, Vikings and, it was taken for granted, Protestants. To add to the sense of occasion, 15-year-old Dara had been dispatched to pick up 200 Regal King Size cigarettes. The 160 that made it back from the shop were distributed on oblong trays of polished silver. Individual cigarettes were also offered freely to guests by hand, as if we were not a gathering of grief-stricken Northern Irish Catholics at all, but a cabal of New York sophisticates toasting a dazzling new biography of Lyndon B Johnson.
Everywhere stood puffy-eyed people with features so red and blotchy it was as if bandages had just been ripped off their faces. Most guests, already sombre and teary when they arrived, were stunned into traumatic shock once they greeted the body. Gripping the coffin’s edge, they stared at my mother, who lay stately, pale and dead at 43. Some regarded her casket as if it were a grisly wound they’d discovered on their own body, registering the sight with a loud gasping horror that made all around them redouble their own racking sobs. Some collapsed in the manner of someone cruelly betrayed, as if they’d arrived at the whole maudlin affair on the understanding they were being driven to a Zumba class.
In any case, a sniffled consensus prevailed that my mother looked “just like herself”. This sentiment was always spoken with an air of relief that suggested Irish morticians were sometimes in the habit of altering the appearance of the dead for a laugh, but on this occasion had read the generally melancholy feeling in the room and realised it would be best to make up her face to look as much as possible as she had in life.
Teatime and sympathy: Séamas sits with his sister Orla for lemonade and biscuits in 1989. Photograph:
My memories of the day itself are scattered, but I do remember a system had been put in place to try to marshal the movements of us Wee Ones, who were too young to understand what was going on. Of course, my ebullient run-around ways couldn’t be suppressed forever and, before long, I was wandering free. I was simply too young to grasp that the only thing sadder than a five-year-old crying because his mammy has died is a five-year-old wandering around with a smile on his face because he hasn’t yet understood what that means.
We laugh about it now, but it really is hard for me to imagine the effect I must have had skipping through the throng, appalling each person by thrusting my beaming, 3ft frame in front of them like a chipper little maître d’, with the cheerful inquiry: “Did ye hear Mammy died?”
The solemnity, not to mention the permanence, of my mother’s death was lost on me then, and it would take a while to sell it in a way I really took to heart. Months later, in much the same manner of a man who remembers a packet of Rolos in his coat pocket, I’d straighten my back with delight and perkily ask the nearest larger person when Mammy was coming back, on account of how she’d been dead for ages and was, surely by now, overdue a return.
Mammy was laid to rest in Derry’s Brandywell cemetery, looking down over Derry City’s stadium. Some years later, a fibreglass statue of a paramilitary volunteer was erected a few graves in front of hers, as a fascinating departure from the ambience of angels and urns graveyards typically aim for. Mounted by the INLA – very much the Andrew Ridgeley of Irish republicanism – it was a striking addition. To this day, any time I visit my mother’s grave, it hovers on the edge of my vision like a giant GI Joe, only one who’s about to give a prepared warning to the world’s media. If you were to construct a heavy-handed visual metaphor for how large a shadow the Troubles cast over everything in Northern Ireland during my childhood, it wouldn’t be a bad shout.
In the months that followed, the shock would subside and the slow, rumbling grief would come in successive, parallel waves. The impacts would come to each of us individually and at different speeds and then be magnified by all of the subsequent considerations of everyone else’s grief, cross-bred and multiplied by the 12 of us trying to make sense of it.
My mother wouldn’t be there any more to kiss grazed knees or carry me to bed when I pretended to have fallen asleep in the car or dry my hair with the static force of a hydroelectric dam. She would never cock an eyebrow at the socialist-tinged T-shirts or abstruse electronica of my teens. She would never smile politely at girlfriends she found overfamiliar, or text me to say she loved them the second I got home. Mammy would never send a text message full stop. She would never read an email or live to see the words “website” or “car boot sale” enter a dictionary. Mammy didn’t even live to see Bryan Adams’s (Everything I Do) I Do It for You get knocked off UK No 1, its perch for four months at the end of her life.
It seems blasphemous that my mother’s death even existed in the same reality as those moments that subsequently came to define my youth: taking the long way home so I could listen to Kid A twice, or poring over the lurid covers of horror paperbacks in a newly discovered corner of Foyle Street library. How is my mother’s passing even part of the same universe that gave me the simple pleasures of ice-cream after swimming lessons in William Street baths, or scenting the sun cream on girls’ skin as they daubed polish on their outstretched, nonchalant nails?
My life wasn’t over from that point on. I’d laugh and cry and scream about borrowed jumpers, school fights, bomb scares, playing Zelda, teenage bands, primary school crushes and yet more ice-cream after yet more swimming lessons. I’d just be doing it without her. To some extent, I’d be doing it without a memory of her. The most dramatic moment of my life wasn’t scored by wailing sirens, weeping angels or sad little ukuleles, nimbly plucked on lonely hillsides. Mammy’s death was mostly signalled by tea, sandwiches and an odd little boy in corduroy trousers, announcing it with a smile across his face.
Grief can have many devastating effects on individuals, loved ones and friends. Knowing this, it’s difficult to see how grief could possibly have a positive outcome. However, if we dig a little deeper, we can understand how grief can actually motivate us to become better versions of ourselves and better leaders. When we think about how grief has affected us, most of us recall the feelings of loneliness, depression and even anger at the situation — whatever it may be. While it is hard to understand why these things happen to cause this grief, there is still hope.
Surprisingly, through all of the feelings we experience during the grieving process, we can actually find the motivation to become better from three primary reasons: gratefulness, inspiration and love. Here’s how you can transform your grief into self-motivation in three ways:
Lean On Gratefulness
Though there are events that happen in our lives that cause us grief, we still need to find reasons to be grateful. You may have heard someone once say, “I’m thankful to be alive right now.” You may have even said or thought it as well. Despite these events that have caused grief, think about how you are thankful to still be here today. By remembering to be grateful that you are here, you can actually choose to live for an individual you’ve lost or even for a cause that aims to bring about change. With the life you still have left to live, you can use it for the better, especially from your position as a nonprofit leader.
You can also ask yourself: What can I do now that I’m here and have another day to experience this thing called life? Perhaps starting new habits, such as taking a morning walk to be grateful for a new day, making a daily phone call or text to that friend or loved one you’ve been meaning to contact or even just cooking a meal for yourself more often. There are so many small habits you incorporate into your day that can help motivate you to move forward.
Get Inspired
We all know how difficult it is to find inspiration after a loss or when we are grieving, whatever the situation may be. It’s important to remember that everything is out of our control. We cannot blame ourselves for bad things happening to those around us who we love. Knowing that, think about how you can help others cope with their grief. Especially as leaders in the nonprofit sector, we have the opportunity to evoke positive change.
Additionally, how can you turn your grief into inspiration and help raise awareness for your causes (whether personal or for your organization)? For example, if you have lost someone you know and love to a terminal illness that people may not know about, perhaps consider sharing information about it to educate others. Or perhaps there are no funds currently going toward that illness, or toward a specific project or community initiative that’s close to you or your organization, depending on the situation. Consider raising awareness and money for this cause and donating it to research centers or collaborative partners who are doing the on-the-ground work. Or consider starting a new branch of your nonprofit to address it. It can be a great way to inspire others to give and learn more about something that is important to you.
Prioritize Love
Love is a motivator for all things, even during grief. By taking a loving approach toward others experiencing grief, you can truly help them. We can use love as a motivator to do great things and make the world a better place. Take a loving approach with whatever you do in life, and teach others what you can in a gentle and kind manner. Grief comes in many forms, and it’s important to be kind to people because we do not know what others may be going through. Prioritizing love is an especially important practice as a leader, whether your organization is large with hundreds of employees or a local NPO with a modest team.
In addition to us helping them during their trials, people can also teach us so much about love and kindness. Whether it’s in your nonprofit organization, or in your personal life, think about what others have taught you about love and kindness. These lessons can motivate you to be better by loving others, but can also teach you the importance of loving yourself.
Concluding Thoughts
No matter what you may be going through or where you are in the grieving process, be sure to remember that something good can come from any situation. You just have to think about what lessons you can learn from trials in life. It may not happen right away, but over time, you can learn to motivate yourself by remembering the reasons grief motivates you to become better. It definitely took me some time to find my motivation again, and when I did, it was for the three reasons I listed above.
Everyone has different reasons for why they are motivated. What are some of your motivators in life, even when you are grieving?
Grief is one of the most universal experiences people go through. It comes with no rulebook and it affects everyone in different ways. The feelings that come with grief are often painful and confusing. But you don’t have to go through it alone.
“Grief is a healthy and natural response to loss or a significant change that shows that someone or something that we love has been lost,” says Dr Lefteris Patlamazoglou, a counselling psychologist and lecturer at Monash University.
“Everybody’s grief looks different and also changes through time.”
The effects of grief
Common responses include sadness, anxiety, anger, disbelief, guilt, irritability and social withdrawal.
“The irreversibility of the loss makes us yearn for the deceased or for things to be like they used to, ruminate over the loss, and worry about the future,” Dr Patlamazoglou says. “People who grieve often have difficulties sleeping, such as getting too much or too little, or having interrupted sleep,” he explains.
“Eating habits tend to change during grief, with some people experiencing over- or under-eating, or consuming poor quality food. Finally, people may neglect their hygiene or looking after themselves.”
It’s also completely normal to feel numb.
“Grief responses come and go in a wave-like pattern, as the intensity of grief fluctuates,” Dr Patlamazoglou adds. “Over time, however, the waves of grief became easier to manage.”
Disenfranchised grief
Also known as hidden grief, this occurs when our feelings go unrecognised by others.
“Grief becomes disenfranchised when it’s not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported,” Dr Patlamazoglou says.
It could be that the manner in which you are grieving goes against the expectations of those around you. Or you may be grieving the loss of a job, fertility issues or leaving the country you grew up in. Disenfranchised grief sometimes occurs if there are social stigmas surrounding the way someone has died, such as a homicide, suicide or HIV/AIDS. It could be the mode of your relationship with the person who has died, such as an ex-partner, colleague or celebrity. Grief can also be overlooked if the person experiencing it is young, very old or affected by a disability or mental illness.
“Disenfranchisement causes people to feel like their losses are not worthy of grieving or that they are overreacting,” Dr Patlamazoglou says. This can cause the person to feel dejected or isolated.
Anticipatory grief
“People may experience anticipatory grief when someone they love is terminally ill or they are facing the inevitable death of a loved one or themselves,” Dr Patlamazoglou says.
“Some people see in anticipatory grief an opportunity to say goodbye and prepare psychologically for the loss of a loved one, while some don’t grieve prior to the loss.”
How can I seek support?
Whether it’s from a counsellor, friends or family, it’s important to seek support early to help you get through troubled times.
“Friends and family can assist by sharing positive memories of the deceased and doing some chores, such as cooking, cleaning and running errands,” Dr Patlamazoglou advises.
“Remind those around you to check on you, and at the same time respect your boundaries and privacy.”
He adds, “Counsellors and psychologists can also help you find ways to manage your grief that are meaningful to you and at a pace that suits your needs.
“Finally, meditation, spirituality or religion, as well as exercise such as walks, gym and yoga, can bring relief and joy.”
How long will it last?
While it’s common to wonder how long these feelings will last, grief has no defined timeline. “In fact, grief may never dissipate entirely,” Dr Patlamazoglou says.
“Rather it’s people’s coping with grief that usually improves with time.”
It’s important to know there is no right or wrong way to grieve.
“Allow yourself to experience grief and let it wash over you,” Dr Patlamazoglou advises. “Grieving is a reminder that you feel love for the person you have lost. Grief is not a burden you should get over but an experience that you can integrate into your life and, through time, you may also gain resilience and grow as a person.”
The power of memory
While it’s common to struggle on significant dates like birthdays or anniversaries, cherishing those memories can help you to cope with your grief.
“You can maintain your bonds with your loved ones by talking to them, dedicating songs to them, watching their favourite movie, cooking their favourite meal or visiting a meaningful place,” Patlamazoglou says.
Showing support
If someone you know is grieving, don’t be afraid to reach out.
“Be proactive. People who grieve may find it difficult to complete chores, so cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and running errands on their behalf can be very helpful,” Dr Patlamazoglou says.
“Also, connect them with a grief counsellor or support services. People usually receive a lot of support from family and friends soon after a loved one’s death, but this support dissipates later on.
Importantly, keep checking on grieving people regularly and respect their boundaries at the same time.”
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. You’ll likely recognize these five words in succession as the five stages of grief, a psychology model that outlines the way in which we can expect to cope—and heal—upon experiencing loss. But what if we’ve had it wrong all this time—and what if that’s actually a good thing?
It’s exactly the point author and grief coach Hope Edelman is trying to make in her recently released title The AfterGrief($16), a book exploring the long arc of loss. “When Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced these five stages in the 1960s, it was for terminally ill patients, and they were called the ‘five stages of dying,’” says Edelman, who notes how those stages, in that regard, made a lot of sense—how one could understandably move from denial and anger about a diagnosis to bargaining for change to eventual acceptance of their prognosis. The problem came, she notes, when those five stages were transferred onto mourners, becoming mistakenly known then as the “five stages of grief.” “It was such a seductive idea to the culture at the time that grief was something that we could work our way through and be done with,” she says. “The media took it and ran with it.”
And for some time, for some people, that narrative seems to pan out okay. Until, that is, any or all of these stages resurface—and those who thought they had finished the grieving process figure they must have gotten something wrong.
“Now, all of the time you hear people saying, ‘I think I’m stuck in the denial phase,’ or ‘I can’t get past the anger phase,’ when, in fact, grief doesn’t work like that,” says Edelman. We can feel all of those emotions—out of order or all at once—and, as so many are realizing, over the course of a lifetime. “Grief doesn’t happen in these neat and tidy silos because it isn’t linear—it’s cyclical,” she says.
It’s exactly why Edelman set out to write The AfterGrief, for which she interviewed 82 individuals, most of whom spoke about their early life losses and the years that followed. She reviewed these accounts alongside interviews with grief experts and data from a series of studies, all with the hopes of creating a model for long-term bereavement—one that extended beyond the previously accepted “five stages.” “I became aware from my own experience and through my research that what we were calling ‘acceptance’ was not an endpoint at all, but a way station that we would depart from and return to many times over the course of a lifetime,” she says.
Edelman lost her own mother at the age of 17, an event that led her to write Motherless Daughters($16) and Motherless Mothers ($14), books exploring the mother-daughter connection and impact of significant loss (the former of which has been translated into 11 languages and sold more than 1 million copies worldwide).
“The AfterGrief was published 27 years after the release of Motherless Daughters, and throughout that time, I had been looking for some kind of model for long-term bereavement that would explain the ways in which grief continues to show up 10, 20, 30 years later—and there weren’t any that spoke to me,” she says. “Having lost my mother in my teens, I knew by now that this clearly wasn’t something I was getting over or getting past or putting down. It was something that I was carrying forward with me.”
Appropriately, the introduction to The AfterGrief is titled “Getting Over Getting Over It,” an immediate reassurance to those who have inevitably experienced the ways in which grief, in all of its twists and turns, can resurface over the years. There are the more expected “grief spikes,” as Edelman writes, times in which grief can return for events like birthdays and anniversaries, or milestones, such as weddings, graduations, or having children of one’s own. And then, there are the “sneak attacks,” a term Edelman adopted from Rebecca Soffer of grief website Modern Loss, describing the moments in which grief reveals itself quickly and unexpectedly. Edelman outlines her own on the first page of her book, detailing a recent experience she had while driving when “The Weight” by The Band started playing. When the refrain’s piano chords kicked in, Edelman was kicked right back to her childhood living room, where she would watch her mother, a classically trained pianist, maneuver the keys with perfectly painted red nails.
“I think of grief more as a constant renegotiation with the facts of a loss and our relationship to those facts—and that changes over time.”
“This kind of grief doesn’t typically last for long, but it can make some feel that they didn’t do it right or that their grief is unresolved,” says Edelman, pointing out that she never did agree with describing grief in such terms. “I think of grief more as a constant renegotiation with the facts of a loss and our relationship to those facts—and that changes over time.” For many, that’s where things can start to feel uncomfortable—when the story we’ve grown so accustomed to is now changing a few years, or a few decades, later. But that change, Edelman reassures us, is a good thing. “If we are growing and maturing and developing our perception of events in the past, then our perspectives are going to change, too.”
As such, Edelman closes out the book with a section on the act of “reframing,” the ways in which we can choose to create meaning around our circumstances. She references a recent interview she saw between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert—both of whom were just 10 years old when their fathers died (and, for Colbert, two brothers, as well)—when Colbert exemplifies this practice, speaking to the importance of loving the things in life we most wish had not happened.
“I think of reframing really as a deliberate or willful shift in perspective—we make a choice that we want our perspective to change,” says Edelman, noting just one way to do this is to acknowledge that while something sad and tragic may have happened to us in losing a loved one, that good things can still come from it. “We may not have had any choice in what happened when someone died—we may have felt really powerless and out of control—but as we carry that loss forward, we do have a lot of choice about how we’re going to do that,” she says. Done accordingly, those who have suffered trauma or tragedy can use those experiences as segues to growth and personal development.
And, Edelman says, as a catalyst for change that extends beyond us, as well: “We can better the world.”
