How To Make It Through Grief and Loss

Let’s chat about grief and loss. Grief and loss may be a topic that some of us know way too much about. This post is inspired by the recent tragedy of Kobe and Gianna Bryant. What exactly caused me to write about this? Let me start first by saying my heart goes out to all of the families affected by this tragedy. Now, as a wife and mother this is a situation that I never want to experience. We experienced a tragedy similar to this in my family almost 2 years ago now. I give props to mothers who have made it through such a horrible situation.

But this post isn’t just focused on mothers who’ve experienced this type of tragedy. This post is for anyone who is experiencing any type of grief or loss. What loss have you experienced that has created grief in your life? Does it feel like you aren’t able to get through this loss? Have you been grieving too long? I want to help you process and get through grief and loss.

Stage 1 of Grief & Loss

The first stage of grief and loss is denial and isolation. Are you not accepting the loss that happened in your life? Or maybe you are isolating yourself from everyone? When I received the news of my cousin passing I couldn’t believe that it happened. The only thought that came to my mind was “this can’t be true.” God couldn’t let this happen to my family. He was too young to die. Unfortunately, this was very true.

There were so many emotions that I experienced in those few seconds after hearing the news. I felt like I was going to throw up hearing the words that he passed. This was something that I never thought we would experience as a family. Believe it or not, this stage is here to help you get through the pain that you are feeling.

Stage 2 of Grief & Loss

The next stage is anger. In this stage, you start to realize that the loss is real. I want you to understand that anger is just a surface emotion. This means that there is another emotion that is lying under the surface. Most times if you are in grief or a loss that emotion is typically hurt.

Another instance where I felt loss was when I had a bad break-up. We typically don’t place a break-up in the same category as grief, but you do go through these stages after a bad break-up. My ex and I were together for quite some time and we started to go through some major problems. One of those problems being infidelity and lying. Those two issues plus more is what led to the demise of our relationship. After this break-up, I had to get through these stages. It took a while but I made it through.

Stage 3 of Grief & Loss

Next, is bargaining. During this stage, you are trying to make a deal with God. You start to believe that there was something that you could do that would have changed the outcome of your situation. For me, I was saying, “maybe if I spend that last day with him he wouldn’t have cheated on me.” You might think that if I did this then that would not have happened.

You’re doing this because you might be feeling guilty in the situation. Believe me, when I say, there was nothing that you could have done to prevent this situation from happening. In my example, my boyfriend would have cheated on me regardless of being around every moment of the day. Being there that much for someone else is just not possible. People are going to do what they are going to do.

Stage 4

Then you experience depression. Depression during this time can come in two forms. The first is sadness and regret. You worry about things like what are you going to do with your free time, or how you’re going to pay for the funeral.

When my god-sister, who was really like my older sister passed I had an extreme amount of regret. My regret came from the fact that she and I hadn’t spoken in almost a year before she passed. The result of that was I didn’t learn until the day she died that she was battling cancer that whole time. So that made the reasons why we stopped speaking seem so incredibly stupid. I was in this stage for a long time.

The second form of depression in this stage is getting ready to let go of the person you lost. You start to prepare yourself to say goodbye. I wasn’t able to do this until after my sister’s funeral was over. I couldn’t say goodbye to her because there was so much that I had to say to her. As a matter of fact, I was not able to pass this stage until after I was pregnant.

Stage 5

The final stage of this process is acceptance. Acceptance might be hard to come by for some people. In order to move forward, you have to accept the fact that you are grieving over a loss. You are sort of making peace with your situation in this stage.

The way I made peace with my sister passing was by saying “she was able to meet my son before he picked me to be his mom in heaven.” Making my peace with my cousin passing was “God wanted him more than we could hold him.” Finally, with my ex-boyfriend I made my peace by saying he wasn’t right for me and there was someone else out there that was more my fit. Making peace with your loss is not easy, trust me. Some people get stuck here. Please if you want to see the sun after the storm you have to accept your loss.

Conclusion

Grief and loss is a very difficult process that we all have to deal with at some point in life. I hate to say that this is just a fact of life. I mainly relied on God to get me through all of the situations that I had in life. Although He didn’t seem like He was around when these situations happened God was definitely there. If He wasn’t, then the outcome would have been completely different.

I commend Vanessa Bryant when she was speaking at Kobe and Gianna’s memorial service. She exuded such strength during her speech. It makes me believe that she might have been in the stage where she was getting ready to let go of her husband and child. This is definitely something that I wouldn’t have been able to do.

I hope this post is helpful to you. I don’t know where you are in your grief and loss. Please know that this is a process and you will have to get through it. One day you will see the final step, acceptance. I may not be dealing with the same type of grief and loss that you are but I have been there and I know it will get better one day.

Psalms 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and he saves those whose spirits have been crushed.

Let me know how you made it through your grief and loss. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @itsashleyjw.