Maybe We Don't Grieve Differently

One of our biggest misconceptions about grief is that we all grieve differently.

I don't believe that.

I think we avoid grief differently.

And I think the belief that we all grieve differently can sometimes help us maintain that avoidance.

Grief is an ancient human practice.

Long before we had therapists, grief counselors, bereavement leave, or stages of grief, human beings grieved.

We cried.

We wailed.

We shook.

We sang.

We prayed.

We moved our bodies.

We gathered.

We grieved together.

Grief was not simply something happening inside an individual. It belonged to the community because we belonged to one another.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to privatize grief.

This is my loss.

My emotion.

My process.

My timeline.

And then we learned to measure whether we were grieving correctly.

But perhaps grief is much simpler and much older than that.

Grief is allowing what is already moving through us to move.

Sometimes what moves through me is mine.

Sometimes it belongs to my family.

Sometimes it belongs to my community.

Sometimes I am grieving something that began long before I arrived.

And sometimes the tears I shed are watering ground I may never personally see bloom.

For a long time, I avoided some of my own grief because I believed grief required suffering.

I don't believe that anymore.

Grief isn't suffering.

Grief is sad.

There is a difference.

Sadness can move.

Tears can move.

Sound can move.

The body can move.

Grief wants to move.

The suffering often comes when I believe I must hold what was meant to move through me.

The suffering happens in my resistance of grief.

And perhaps that is why grief requires community.

Not because I need someone to fix my grief.

Not because I am incapable of carrying my own pain.

But because some things are too big to belong to one person.

Maybe the question isn't:

How do you grieve?

Maybe it is:

What have we forgotten about how to grieve together?

~ Quanita

If you are looking for a place to grieve in community join one of our Grief & Praise Seasonal Online Gathering