Takeaways & Reflections | The Judgment of Grief

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

What is it costing you by looking to others for permission to grieve your way?

What is it costing you, to not address the child within you and the grief you’ve carried with you into adulthood from your childhood?

Grief isn’t about death alone. So, don’t be mistaken that because someone did not die in your childhood that you don’t have grief or, that you aren’t holding on to the energy of grief.

The loss of hopes, dreams, expectations – for relationships, your life, career, health, finances…
Anything you wish would’ve been different, better…this is grief.

We so quickly judge our grief; thinking we’re not doing it “right” or, doing it badly or not quickly enough, etc. We also judge other grievers and how they’re “dealing with” their grief. Which is ironic, isn’t it? Since the vast majority of the population has no idea how to “deal with” their own grief, right?

We break this vicious cycle of judgment when we know better, learn new tools and information, and stop having these crazy expectations of others and ourselves.

Every relationship is unique, therefore, we cannot begin to know or understand the grief of another on the level the griever themselves knows it. It’s impossible. We can relate to their story or their loss, but we can’t truly know what their grief is like for them. This is why judgment is hurtful and can even be harmful.

I get on a bit of a soapbox in this episode, but this information matters to me. And, I want it to matter to you, too. THIS is how we change the conversation around grief – new knowledge, new information, and new tools. Let’s end the judgment!

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What is Grief and How Complex It Is

And today is the takeaways and reflections episode from Episode 90 with Jill Johnson young rebellious widow times two. And today I’m just going to dive deeper into a few topics that Jill and I talked about which were many. We discussed boundaries, we talked about online support groups and how those have changed since COVID. And much of her conversation was also obviously her story of being a widow, not once but twice. And the judgment and criticism that she often felt that she wasn’t grieving, right, or she was doing something wrong, which is often the case that many people feel judged or criticized that they’re not moving beyond their grief fast enough, or they’re not handling it well. Or maybe they’re handling it too well. And maybe you’ve been one of those people that kind of looks at someone and thanks, gosh, they’re not even really crying. Why aren’t they more sad? Or someone’s on vacation, and they’re laughing. And it’s maybe been only three months since their loved one passed? And you might be asking yourself, gee, how can they go on vacation so soon and be laughing and having a good time. And if that were me, I’d be in my bed and sobbing. And this is what we do. We criticize, and we judge each other in our grief. And although it’s not surprising to me, it can be hurtful, and very harmful to people. And I think this behavior starts to change.

And maybe even altogether stop, once we learn, really what grief is and how complex it is, and how individual it also is. Because here’s the thing, you can be an outsider looking in, but you’re never going to understand that person in their grief. You never will, you can relate to it. But because the person they’re grieving, had a unique relationship with them. All of our relationships are unique. This is why when children are grieving, who, like siblings, let’s say who loses parent, each one of those children will grieve in their own way. They may have experienced the same loss. But the relationships are very different that each of the child had with their parent. There can be on loving relationships that can cause a great deal of pain. And so if you are thinking of someone right now who may have lost a parent, let’s say they’re an adult, and they lost a parent, and they’re not the least bit sad, or appearing that way. You just don’t know what the story was. Maybe that person was deeply wounded by their parent, maybe even abused in some way. You just don’t know. I always try to say or think to myself, I don’t know what I don’t know. So if you are finding yourself questioning someone’s the process, someone is grieving. Just say that to yourself. I don’t know what I don’t know. And what I know for sure that you don’t know is the uniqueness of that relationship. So that’s my spiel on that.

Taking About the 5 Stages of Grief

But one of the things that was also mentioned in our in that episode was the five stages. And this has actually come up. The last several, actually, the last three recordings I’ve done with guests, the five stages and, and I feel like I have to, in some ways defend Elisabeth Kubler Ross and her work because, you know, even in my training as a certified Grief Recovery specialist when I was in my training, the five stages are definitely mentioned. But really, it wasn’t about what I was told at that time when I certified was that her work wasn’t about her initially, the five stages were not about people who are just grieving a loved one. Overall, it was, you know, she was working with those who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. But that being said, I’ve since talked to her son, Kenneth Ross, and he really opened my eyes to her work. And really, that the five stages, that’s not where it ended. There’s, and they’re not linear either. And so I he said, he gets frustrated, too, he had shared his frustration that, you know, pop culture, and society has put these five stages on this pedestal and people just can’t let it go. Just they can’t let the five stages go. It’s everywhere. It’s in The Simpsons. It’s in books, it’s in movies. It’s it’s everywhere. Elisabeth Kubler Ross is a pop culture icon. Because five stages of grief has been coined. And it was from her work. But again, there’s more than just five, nonlinear, I say that in air quotes, nonlinear stages. They’re just emotions. They’re they’re phases of grief that you go through. And you come back to again, it’s like this wave I recorded with someone recently, and I just I thought this was the most beautiful description of grief. He had lost his mother as a child.

And many years later, 30 plus years later, he’s been confronted with some of her belongings, and seeing them for the first time, and he said, it feels like a shipwreck. And there’s these artifacts and these things that I’m having to look at. And for the first time, and, and that’s grief, it can feel like a shipwreck. But over and over and over again, through the years, as maybe new information comes to light, or new memory surface, or a relationship that your loved one had with someone and they share something with you that you didn’t know, this is why grief is so complicated. In our hearts, it feels so complicated and difficult to navigate. Because we always will have it in our lives is this undercurrent. It’s always there. And why is it always there? Because you take yourself everywhere, right? Like, you can’t run away from yourself. And you can’t run away from your grief. It’s always there. That being said, I know from my own experience, and in working with Grievers and the many people that I’ve talked to for my podcast, that it is possible to feel joy again, it’s possible to feel purpose in your life. And like Gil Johnson, Jung said, you can still go to Disneyland and be a Griever Right? You can still smile, you can laugh, and you can feel joy again. And it’s what you choose to do with those complicated and complex feelings in your heart. Whether it was a loving relationship or not. How you want to move forward. Do you want that to be your the end of your story? That suffering is just what you’re meant to meant to do? Because that’s what I believed for a long time. I guess I’m just here to suffer. And I’m telling you that’s not true. It doesn’t have to be true for you.

We’re Just Big Versions Of Ourselves

What’s come to my mind as I’ve been having recent conversations and as I was editing Jill’s web podcasts Episode was that we are all just like all of us as adults, we’re all just big kids and diapers. Again, learning how to deal with life, deal with grief, address the incomplete feelings we have about relationships long gone, or relationships still in our lives, we are adult versions of our childselves. And so whatever pains and sorrows, in hurts and anxieties, or fears, we bring those with us to adulthood. And, you know, when children lose a loved one, or they’ve gone through something traumatic, children know how to grieve, the youngest of youngest know how to grieve. But they often need permission by others to do so. And adults often shut children down to grieving. Because it makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to say they don’t know how to handle it. Because like I said, as adults, We’re just big children. We’re just big versions of ourselves. Kind of in training pants, like one of the one of my guests said that someone he knows developed a program of how to be, oh, gosh, how was it? How to not be emotionally constipated. Which is true, I mean, right? We become emotionally constipated as adults.

Because we don’t know what to do with our emotions. We don’t know how to let them flow through us, we just hold on to them. And we fight to hold on, we fight to hold on to our grief, we fight to hold on to our anger. And we fight to hold on to our suffering, thinking it’s bringing some sort of honor to the memory of this person we lost. Or it’s making us feel better to hold on to the anger of someone who wronged us. But really, you’re the one suffering. I was the one suffering. And so this is why as adults, it’s in our hands, to allow children to grieve. We need to give them permission to grieve. And isn’t it ironic that as adults, the person that needs permission is ourselves like, as adults grieving, we need to give ourselves permission. And we look to other adults. If we’re unsure, am I doing this right? Should I be over this already, and then we look to other adults to give us permission. We’re always looking elsewhere for permission. You don’t need permission, feel how you’re gonna feel. And really let yourself feel it. Because like I’ve said, on my website, and I say it several times and podcast, various podcasts, you got to feel it to heal it. You got to feel it, to heal it. Because as long as we’re bigger versions of ourselves, and we haven’t really felt what was in our childhoods or we’re feeling it in adulthood. But what is the cost of that? What are you trading in the process for not giving yourself permission? And for looking for looking to others for permission? There is a cost to not feeling it to heal it. What is yours? I think there is so much more I could say but that feels really complete today. Of what what I feel like needed to be said and shared. So I’m going to end there.

And I really recommend listening to Episode 90 with Jill Johnson young because it really is a rich conversation. We talked about so many different aspects of grief. She gives really great information to about with children, which I love because I was a child Griever maybe I could stay still on right because I’m I’m just a bigger version of my child’s self right. This is why I think is as adults we often end up parenting ourselves. Like we have to learn how to parent ourselves. Because so many of us didn’t receive that guidance, especially when it comes to grief. But I’ll tell him you can break the cycle. You can learn new tools, you can learn new information and this podcast is a great start. So soak in every episode or as many as you can learn some new information, learn through people’s stories and break the cycle. Be a different source of support for Grievers that you know, be the heart with yours For a child, or for a loved one, or for a friend, or for a colleague, is there’s a very good chance that they don’t have someone in their life that can just sit with them. Thank you so much for listening today. I look forward to sharing more rich conversations with you. There are so many more to come!

much love, victoria

Right now I have episodes lined up into November. That’s a fantastic problem to have. I thought when I first started this podcast, I would have a really difficult time finding people who wanted to share about their grief. But really, that’s been the easiest part. And it’s really enriched my life, to sit with people and their stories and really go deep with them. This podcast has been one of the greatest things I’ve ever done. And I thank you so much for your time and listening. If you find this podcast helpful, even if one episode has chipped shifted your perspective about grief for your own grief or the grief of a loved one or, or child you know or love, please leave a review, if you would five stars, if you felt it was worthy of that, and a few lines to share how it helped you. That would be so fantastic. And I’d be so appreciative. I don’t get paid for this. I’m not there’s no ads, there’s, this is purely out of my mission, to shift the conversation, change a conversation around grief, and how we view it, how we look at it, how we talk about it. So thank you so much.

If you are a Griever, and you’re just not sure where to turn or what to do, or you’ve been doing something that hasn’t been helping you, when we do the same thing, we’re always going to get the same result. It’s when we do something different if we’re open to a new new method or a new method, or methodology or what are you missing out on in your life by not addressing your grief. And so there’s a program that I have, it’s called do grief differently. It’s working with me one on one for 12 weeks. And we dive deep in your grief and in your story. And we shift your perspective around that story and help you to get complete, emotionally complete with a relationship that has been truly painful. Or maybe it was very loving. Right? It could be very loving and just really making it difficult for you to move on in your life and move forward. But we don’t just work on one we actually work on two. And often it is a relationship with a parent, because those are the most influential relationships we have. These they take up so much that they’re it’s embedded in who we are those beliefs that we grow up with those stories that get that take root right in our lives and that we carry forward into adulthood. So check that out on my website. There’s more information there. Theunleashedheart.com and and thank you again for listening. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

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