The Power of Grief

The loss of a family member, a beloved pet, or even a friendship can be one of the most difficult and disruptive events we experience in our lives. While each loss is unique, the emotional turmoil and anguish it can cause is shared by all humans (and even some other sentient beings). Many of us are familiar with the five stages of grief as defined by the Kübler-Ross model: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. When bringing up this model, it’s important to remember that everyone grieves differently, these stages are not always experienced in this order, and that we may also experience other emotions such as guilt or shock/disbelief. In this article I’d like to think about the acceptance phase of grief.

Acceptance is more than just a logical acknowledgement of loss; it means understanding that this loss has changed our life and that things will be different moving forward. This may be an intimidating idea. Sometimes the grief we experience can be debilitating, and the notion that we will never fully recover is genuinely scary. Grief is powerful and it can weigh on us very heavily, especially when it is fresh and we have not yet been able to process it in our own way. Its power can overwhelm our other feelings and senses, and the pain and mental turmoil can make thinking about anything else or returning to “normal” life difficult.  

Although our lives may never be the same, I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing. It can be immensely challenging, but loss and the pain that accompanies it is an unavoidable part of life. Denying ourselves these feelings disconnects us from what makes us human and the emotions that ultimately allow us to feel alive ourselves. 

When you google the five stages of grief, the acceptance stage is typically defined as learning to adapt and integrate the loss. What does integration look like? For some people it may be visiting a loved one at their final resting place and speaking with them as if they were there, and for someone else it might be riding a charity bike race in that person’s honor. I had an outdoor/indoor cat named Paul who was very dear to me. He was strong and quick and fiercely independent. He died after being struck by a car in front of my house, and now he’s buried in my backyard. He’ll never come back in a physical form, but I’ll often think about his spirit and the qualities I admired in him, and it gives me strength. 

In time, the power of grief might provide us with a sense of energy or even purpose. We may get to a point where we feel that we can re-connect with and even be guided by the person or thing that we’ve lost. If you have recently suffered a loss, or are feeling stuck with it somehow and unable to process it, it’s probably best not to rush towards acceptance as a means of pushing away or dealing with these feelings. I’m not sure if we ever truly “get over” a significant loss. But if getting over it means forgetting about the incredible person, animal, or relationship that was once in our lives, or pushing away the powerful emotions that allow us to reconnect to them, then I don’t want to move past it. I want to live with it. We may still have the heartache years later (and perhaps for the rest of our lives), but this can be where our meaningful memories reside. The grief we feel may be the gateway through which we can access and start to live out their beautiful and wonderful qualities that we once thought lost.        

If you found this article interesting, we’d invite you to listen to episode fifteen of the Facing the Moment podcast, Moving Forward Through Grief, where Toufic Hakim, PhD, speaks with Ty Cutner about his own experience handling loss early in his life, how to use introspection to allow ourselves time and space to grieve, and the different ways in which grief allows us to be more fully alive and flourish.