The Three Gifts Every Griever Needs (Including You)

In grief, we can support ourselves and one another with three gifts.

Source: Alex Green/Pexels

On August 30, National Grief Awareness Day is a day dedicated to “raising awareness of the myriad ways in which individuals cope with loss.”

While it may not be as fun as National Ice Cream Day or as popular as National Take Our Children to Work Day, its recognition serves a worthy purpose, with potential far beyond its more popular calendar-mates. That’s because unlike ice cream and children, the onset of grief isn’t a preference or choice, but rather an inescapable experience the vast majority of us will encounter.

It stands to reason, then, that increasing our awareness of grief (a natural reaction to loss, particularly to death), will help us better understand mourning (the outward response to grief), and bereavement (the state of being denied something or someone).

However, improving our grief literacy isn't the only benefit to promoting grief awareness. Doing so can help us learn to identify our grief and advocate for our needs, in both our home and workplace. As a result, we can also develop a deeper understanding of ourselves, and engage more compassionately with one another.

But if you think you haven't experienced grief, or aren't able to support someone else through grief, think again. Three mini but mighty gifts can help you make a meaningful impact, starting today.

1. Identify Grief

Though death is most commonly associated with grief, it is not the only type of grief and death is not a pre-requisite to its onset. When asked, it's likely easy to name loved ones who have died. But, listing other losses that activated grief is often more difficult. That's because, for the vast majority of us, the impact of our loss went unrecognized and our grief wasn't validated. If we're advocating for grief awareness, it's important we're able to identify grief in its various forms.

For example, anticipatory grief is experienced when a loved one is still living and death is expected (e.g., the onset of a terminal illness). Ambiguous grief is the experience of grieving the loss of a loved one who is still living and is marked by a change in or death of the relationship.

Without societal norms to engage (such as funerals), the grieving process is ambiguous and if shame or embarrassment is internalized, grievers often isolate and grieve alone. (e.g., activating events include addiction, cognitive decline, divorce, estrangement, incarceration, etc.). Disenfranchised grief is not openly acknowledged or publically supported through mourning practices or rituals because the experience is not valued or counted by others as a loss. (e.g., infertility, miscarriage, sexual assault, death by suicide).

Finally, prolonged grief (PG) is grief that continues to be intense and pervasive, disrupting everyday life for longer than a year. According to The Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia University, PG impacts "about 10-20 percent of bereaved people...and people experiencing PG often describe it as feeling 'stuck' in grief or 'frozen in time' as if the death had just happened."

When considering your personal loss and grief history, be sure to include all forms of grief. It's likely you'll find experiences previously unidentified as grief. In this case, gift number two is imperative.

2. Permission

How we grieve, or not, impacts us physically and mentally. The experience of body aches, forgetfulness, and difficulty concentrating, as well as how/if we eat or sleep depends on a variety of factors and can be impossible to foresee. One day you may feel lethargic and bound to your bed, while the next day, you navigate your daily activities with ease.

No matter what the cause of our grief, be it due to a physical death or divorce, the loss of an important relationship can be excruciatingly painful.

To healthfully manage this hurt and begin to adjust to life without our loved one, we must give ourselves, and one another, gift two: permission to grieve.

Doing so allows us to process and honor who, or what, we have lost, no matter how fresh or old the loss. Be it a beloved spouse this week, a treasured friend from childhood, the safety of a marriage, or the cherished role as a mom, the depth and breadth of our loss are proportionate to that of our love and the new void created in our loss.

While this may be collectively understood, our culture doesn’t recognize this as well as we should. With over 60 percent of American companies providing only three days of paid bereavement leave and only an estimated 25 percent recognizing bereavement upon miscarriage or pregnancy loss, there is much room for improvement.

Grief Essential Reads

Can Children Grow as a Result of Loss?

When Children Lose a Loved One

Regardless of whether or not your community or your employer recognizes your loss, it’s essential that you do. Give yourself permission to grieve and then do so.

Social media may not reflect an accurate depiction of someone's grief.

Source: Teona Swift/ Pexels

3. No Judgment

Recently, someone identifying herself as a “concerned friend” contacted me about “Ann”, a recently widowed friend for whom she’d become increasingly worried. The primary concern was that Ann “wasn’t grieving” and hadn’t expressed grief in the many months since her husband had died.

What Ann was doing was also "concerning", namely that she was active on social media. Ann’s posts provided evidence of what was “wrong:” She had returned to work, taken her children to a birthday party (possibly two), was traveling (with and without her children), and was “smiling in every picture.”

I suspected that Ann's social media might be the sole source of reference.

“When was the last time you were with her?” I asked.

“Oh, well, she's a friend of a friend, we’ve never actually met.” She replied.

Unfortunately, with the rise of social media platforms, this kind of "care" isn't uncommon. Though the concerned “friend’s” heart may have been in the right place, her perspective wasn’t.

When we view someone else's grief through our own personal grief lens and deem their actions as faulty or “wrong”, that's a (flashing neon) sign that we have our own work to do.

Judging Ann—or anyone's response to loss—is what is wrong. For most, grief is an intensely personal and intimate act not intended for public consumption. And that's OK.

So, instead of assuming someone isn’t grieving the way you have grieved (or think you would grieve), try not to judge their grief, or anyone’s grief, including your own. Aside from trained professionals experienced in grief support, how can one measure what is too much or not enough expression of another person’s grief?

Or how soon, if ever, it's appropriate for someone to return to work, attend a party, express joy, move to a new home, or begin dating after loss?

The only person who knows is the griever, and (spoiler) they may not even know.

Three Gifts That Keep Giving

As we are better able to identify our own grief and grant ourselves permission to feel the pain of our losses without judgment, hopefully, we will be better able to support others as well.

The next time you find yourself worried about an “Ann” in your life, examine why that is; is someone in real danger? Do you have reason to fret or are you looking through the wrong lens?

Perhaps observing the grief of another touches something deep within you. If so, consider your losses, in all their forms, and identify your grief. Then, give yourself permission to grieve, and go from there.

As you do, I hope you will be gentle with yourself and do so without judgment. Remember, you don't have to grieve alone, unless you choose to. A myriad of resources are available, including support groups, grief educators, practitioners, and clinicians.

Perhaps as we give these gifts again and again, we will not only raise our awareness of grief but our collective compassion as well. I'm not suggesting grief education and awareness is the panacea for our pained world, but I do believe grief is a portal that can move us in the direction of our best selves—if we allow it.

You can do it. I’m rooting for you.

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