Navigating Daily Life While Grieving

"Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be... Grief is different. Grief has no distance." — Joan Didion

This award-winning author wrote this about grief after the death of her husband in her poignant memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. As Didion found out, grief changes everything. The normal trip to the market triggers an emotional meltdown. You may have a meltdown when you see a letter addressed to your loved one or when you see a preview of the movie you were planning to see together.

As a grieving person, you may feel that you deserve a pass and that others should accept and excuse your rough emotions, your complaining, or your pessimism about the future.

After my husband died, I found myself dodging social events because I feared people asking me, "How are you?" and expecting me to answer honestly. One of the reasons I went into therapy post-loss is because I not only knew the value of seeking professional help (I obtained an M.S.W. prior to my husband's death) but also because I needed someone who could provide feedback and listen to me without judgment.

While you will face many challenges, coping with your emotions may be one of the most difficult ones.

It is completely normal to feel anger, disappointment, depression, or even relief if the relationship was abusive. I do not believe that there is really such a thing as closure over the loss of your loved one, but I have seen the bereaved transition from deep despair into living without it disrupting their daily lives. As surreal and insurmountable as early grief might feel, it is a normal path that bereaved travel.

Whatever feelings you encounter in the first several months post-loss, one of the toughest aspects of grief is that you are alone with the emotional pain. I know I felt like I didn't have enough family members or friends to absorb all of my tough emotions, so you may need to find healthy ways to discharge some of it. Some people find support groups or therapy helpful. Others find this combined with exercise as a good stress reliever. Research has found positive physical and emotional benefits from even a short walk.

Sometimes our biggest enemy is our own thoughts. We can set ourselves up for failure and more isolation. It went something like this for me: "I know I shouldn't be disappointed if I don't get invited to the event, but I really want to go. Should I mention it? No, I don't want them to see me as needy. Actually, I am needy—my husband just died. Why can't anyone see how lonely I am?"

As someone who is grieving, you are likely fatigued, and a lack of sleep, coupled with the shock of your loss, can make it difficult to handle difficult emotions, such as guilt. A common source of guilt is the feeling that you could have done more.

I felt guilty after my husband died. And because his cancer was asymptomatic, he appeared strong. We received the diagnosis that he had adrenal cancer, and we knew no treatment was available. However, after he died, I had doubts about what I should have or could have done: I should have recognized that he was sick. I should have known something was wrong. If I had recognized the symptoms earlier, maybe he could have been saved. The guilt stayed with me for years after the funeral. And then, an opportunity presented itself that led to me talking to a renowned adrenal cancer specialist at the cancer center at the University of Michigan, Dr. Gary Hammer. In my book, I shared how I voiced my guilt to him.

"Kristin," he said, "you did everything you could have done."

It was such a relief to hear those words. I no longer had to carry around that burden, along with everything else I was trying to deal with post-loss.

Guilt often comes in the form of self-doubt, regret, or self-recrimination.

Perhaps there is something you think you could have done to save your loved one's life or something you didn't do that would have eased their pain. Maybe there were some words you wished you had shared. Guilt can stick around for years, and getting feedback from a therapist or support group is often helpful.

Guilt can also isolate the bereaved because the internal struggle is seldom shared. And in many circumstances, the bereaved will ruminate about their thoughts. Very few things are more difficult than feeling isolated and alone with negative memories.

Being hard on yourself by layering more blame and feeling more anger and striving for perfection will only create more anxiety. In the book The Places That Scare You, American Buddhist nun and best-selling author Pema Chödrön offers a view of self-compassion: "When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience the fear of our pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move greatly toward what scares us."

And in another book, When Things Fall Apart, Chödrön writes, "What we hate in ourselves, we'll hate in others. To the degree that we have compassion for ourselves, we will also have compassion for others. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, for all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at."

Grief Essential Reads

When Children Lose a Loved One

What I Learned From a Week Contemplating My Death

Grief and the difficult emotions one encounters aren't eased with one simple remedy. However, self-compassion is one of the ways to soften our inner critic, and being gentle with yourself is essential to healing grief.