AMAA: Living with Grief
This month, our very own Peer Worker from PeerChat, Axolotl is opening up about their own experiences with grief. They have shared their story below.
Grief is something we all expect to experience at some (and varying) points of our lives. I’ll admit I can’t remember it super well, but my first encounter with grief was probably when I lost my dog as a kid, and later when I was 13 and I lost my nan. In a way, I think we hold a vague sense of the kinds of grief we anticipate experiencing (that is, who we would expect to lose at certain points of our lives) because we know that no one lives forever. We expect our grandparents to die before our parents, and we expect that our pets won’t outlive us.
But of course, no amount of expectation can really fully prepare us for grief. And of course, things don’t always go as we expect. Grief can totally mess with our sense of reality and the things we feel secure and comfortable in.
I was 17 when my mum, seemingly out of the blue, was diagnosed with a terminal illness: motor neuron disease. We were told to expect her to live for about another year. About 6 months later, things took a rapid decline, and I held her hand as she passed away, silently.
Grief is more than just losing a physical person; we’re not just grieving the past, the time we had up until now with the person we love, but also grieving the future we expected to have with them that we will never see be crystallised. When I grieved, I grieved the life I expected to live with her (having her walk me down the aisle, watching her grow old, being a young adult with her and not just a kid), I grieved my family ‘structure’ as I knew it (the relationship I held with my father and sister), and I grieved the version of myself that I was pre-loss.
It took me a long time to feel ‘normal’ after my loss, though I suppose events like these kinda throw out what we think ‘normal’ to mean anyway. I suppose a better way of describing it would be that it took me a long time to feel okay with the fact that she was gone. Grief wasn’t something to overcome, but to reckon with; not something to push down, but to witness.
Holidays and special events can make grief feel much more tender, because someone’s absence becomes more pronounced. When all we hear is sentiments of family, love, and togetherness, it’s easy to grieve what’s missing. A lot of feelings come up for me: sadness towards the loss, anger towards the injustice of it, emptiness towards the fact that even times of apparent joy feel far less magic.
Let’s Talk About It!
With this holiday period coming up, I thought it would be helpful to start a dialogue about how we sit with grief, sharing insights with one another to honour our collective strength. If you have any questions about grief that you want to ask me, from my personal experience and my knowledge as a peer worker, chuck them in this google form!
At our next event I’ll be sure to finish my story with some of the key lessons I’ve learnt/am learning from my grief, and answer some of your questions.
In the meantime…
I would also love to hear about what you’ve learnt from your experiences with grief (in any form it arrives) and any advice you have for people also experiencing loss- especially during the holiday period!
Support and extra resources
If you're needing urgent support, we encourage you to reach out to a crisis service. You might also like to check out our collection of articles on grief and loss, or visit Griefline.
Comments
Hear more from Axolotl below!
The Key Lessons I Have Learnt About Grief
We grow around it
In the few days following my mum’s passing, I was practically a shell of a person. I couldn’t get my mind to focus upon anything else, and I could barely do the things I needed to do to function as a person, like sleeping and eating. It feels vulnerable to acknowledge that you’re not coping so well with all the general life stuff as the world seems to move on around you. In that time, it’s so important to lean upon others like friends and family, because of course you’re not expected to just move on and be okay straight away. Reach out to those not impacted by the passing for help with daily life stuff and to have someone to vent to you, and also reach out to those who are also experiencing the same grief with you. Solidarity, and sharing in/with that grief, can be so powerful.
And know that it won’t always be this way. As we can see in the diagram below, the grief itself doesn’t become any bigger and smaller, but we grow around it. We keep it with us, and orbit it in our day to day lives. But our capacity expands.
I also know that it’s easy to feel guilty about what seems like ‘moving on’ from the grief, like by returning to your life responsibilities and also just generally feeling happy again. When at one point the grief feels all consuming, it can feel weird, and subsequently wrong, to feel anything but that grief.
But I promise you- this does not make you a bad person. It would be unrealistic and unsustainable to be feeling intense grief all of the time. Growing around the pain doesn’t mean it disappears- it just means that we feel more able to do the things we need to do.
We grow with it
I think a lot of the time, we think about grief as something we need to shed, to eventually just get over. It can feel like this big insurmountable hurdle that we need to cross in order to move on with our lives. As if grief is a burden.
I know that I perceived grief this way for a really long time, and I think it’s got a lot to do with how our society views mental health as something that needs to be ‘cured’ without looking at all of the underlying reasons and structures that cultivate our collective distress. When every day we’re witnessing pain, travesty, and loss in our world, why wouldn’t we feel grief? Grief is what makes us human.
When I stumbled across this quote, pulled from a televised interview with actor Andrew Garfield, my whole perspective shifted:
Like Andrew said, grief is not just about emotions that we normally situate as ‘bad’ (like pain, sadness, anger- the kinds of things we tend to want to run away from)- but it is also at it’s very core love. Love for someone whose physical presence is no longer here, so we don’t really have anywhere to place that love.
What that means is that I seek the ways I can scatter my love for my mum elsewhere and everywhere: to my friends, strangers, lovers, the things I’m passionate about. I carry my mum with me when I carry her kindness, her love for a cup of tea, her belief in me that transforms into self-belief. When I see these glimmers of her in the world and in myself, I feel sad and I also feel love, and these two things are entangled together. I feel grateful for my grief, because it means that I have loved and I will continue to love.
Also, check out this super cute video of Andrew Garfield and Elmo from Sesame Street talking about grief. I think a lot of adults needs to hear this just as much as kids:
We grow, not just despite it, but because of it
Grief does change us fundamentally- whether we like it or not. Like I said, grief means we also grieve the person we once were, before the loss. It’s so normal to feel anger and frustration at these parts of you that you’ve felt you’ve lost or have that changed- I know I certainly did. What made a huge difference for me was learning that that was ok, and radically accepting that I wouldn’t be the same. And that that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
When we accept that grief changes us, we take a bit of our power back, or at least we get the impression of power or self-control. We’re changing, growing, and evolving, because of our life experiences, and this all amounts to the big messy contradicting and still incredible make-up of who we are. When we embrace that change, even if scary, it means we give ourselves permission to reflect on who we are and who we want to be, and act upon our visions.
I spent a long time trying to run away from my grief, pushing it away and distracting myself in any attempt to not experience the pain. And of course I did- pain sucks! Why would I intentionally choose to be experiencing it, if I could just be busy instead?
But running away from the change doesn’t mean that the change disappears. It catches up eventually, and that’s ok. It’s ok to sit with all the feelings that surround it, and give yourself the permission to go through all of the messy emotions that grief brings up. Some days will be harder than others, especially when significant events like birthdays or anniversaries come up. That pain that our body harbours inside of it might be activated, even at the smallest trigger, and it’s like you’re reliving that initial pain all over again. But by being not just numb to the pain but welcoming it, I’m giving myself permission to do the grieving that I need to do. Be kind to yourself, and patient. There is no normal timeline or series of events around grief, like we can see in the diagram below.
This is such an important topic.
I lost my dad in August this year from alcoholism. I have good days and bad days. But this loss has changed me as a person. Life at first seemed so dull but i knew that my dad would want me to live. I miss my dad so much and grief can feel so lonely at times, especially with the holidays coming up.
People keep telling me 'I don't know how you do it, you are so strong' and for me, i just have no choice other than to keep going. I had to do everything for my dad. My advice i would give to someone is take your time and be kind to yourself. You will get angry, and you will be sad. You will smile again and laugh and don't feel guilty about that. Life does go on sadly and we have to live in this new world but give yourself the room and time to adjust.
Thank you for sharing this, i really appreciate it 💚
So beautifully portrayed Axolotl!
Personally I had to face the death of my grandfather a year ago and your post truly resonated with me in the fact that grief is such a strong and pervasive emotions but as you had said, we mustn't try to fight but learn to live with it as it comes. So for me, my advice on losing someone was to keep on going, keep on persuasing what you hoped to achieve because I felt like my love ones would rather see me happy and thriving, honouring their legacy and love than me being debilitated by their loss.
Family reunions as you mentioned are no longer the same for me now as well ( now that 2 of our elders have passed, both of my grandparents), We no longer have big reunion dinners with the entire extended family. I would admit that it's tough that these reunions no longer stand due to the absent of my grandparenrs but it's not to say that the extended don't meet up, we would on occasions still go off on festive celebrations and congregate together.
I would admit that it does not feel as homely as it used to but the bond that we have with each other stills remain albeit we all do it differently, so my guidance on that would be to be patient with everyone, as people all take in grief and losses differently and since it only been a short while, it is not to say things might not change for the better.
Overall, excellent post from Axolotl and I hope to hear more thoughts on the matter as well.
