Responses to Loss
At Life after Loss, our hopes are that by sharing our experiences and reflections, people can start to normalize their own grief experience and understand that there is no right or wrong way to grieve.
Anger and the grief experience
Anger during the grief experience, can be used as a coping style to gain some control during a time where one’s world may feel shattered and also during a time where we feel our most vulnerable.
Guilt and the grief experience
Through guilt, we try to make sense of the death. We focus on all the would haves and should haves and almost punish ourselves for our imperfections. We create this idea in our minds that burdens us with some level of responsibility for the loss.
Rumination and the Grief Experience
Rumination allows us to avoid facing the permanence that death brings forth. To think that it can’t be reversed and that nothing that you do, think, or say will change the fateful events of when your loved one died is a hard pill to swallow.
Joy and the Grief Experience
There will come a time where you will remember a fond memory with your loved one and laugh. Grief absolutely can have its painful, dark moments but there will come a time where you will experience joy, even if just momentarily.
The Ways We Are Expected to Grieve
In this video, I explore our perception as a culture, society, and individual of what we believe grief “should look like”. Traditions, beliefs, and values all have roots and history. This is why we can pass a belief system from generation to to the next and rarely question its benefits, validity, and whether it truly applies to us.
Darkness within the Grief Experience
West and I explore some of the difficult emotions and experiences that may arise after loss. These difficult emotions can bring up questions like “why am I still here?”, which is a common response when trying to understand what life after loss is supposed to look like.
Taking care of the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of yourself
Finding who you are without your loved one present is no easy task. Taking care of your mental, physical, and spiritual state can onset the necessary healing that needs to take place.