Where to Turn for Help While Grieving
What role does support from the people in your life play while grieving? Where do you find it? Can you expect everyone to support you while grieving? What does someone supporting a grieving person bring to the relationship?
I want to do my best to answer these questions as I continue to support grieving people and train those who support grieving people.
The Grief Journey — One You Take Alone and With Others
I appreciate how grief expert Alan Wolfelt describes the dance between the wilderness of grief you experience after a loss and the need for companionship while grieving.
The wilderness of your grief is your wilderness and it’s up to you to find your way through it. But paradoxically, you also need companionship from time to time as you journey. You need people who will walk beside you and provide you with “divine momentum”—affirmations that what you are doing is right and necessary for you and will lead to your eventual healing. You do not need people who want to walk in front of you and lead you down the path they think is right, nor do you need people who want to walk behind you and not be present to your pain. — Alan Wolfelt, Center for Loss
After a loss occurs, everything changes. You have reactions you don’t expect; are hit with waves of emotion, thoughts, and behaviors that come out of no where; and must walk a journey you can’t give to anyone else. At the same time, we must partner with others so the internal world of grief can be matched by the external world of walking out our grief in a variety of ways with others.
Where do you turn for help while grieving?
For starters, you usually turn to those closest to you — your family and close friends. If they are a source of empathy and support, it can be life giving. Empathetic family and friends don’t judge or minimize your grief or deflect the conversation because they are uncomfortable sitting with you in your grief.
We can add groups of people we are in community with — like local clubs, church groups, neighborhood connections, school and work associates. Another place to turn could be to professionals — counselors, medical professionals, religious leaders, etc.
Another place for support could come from support groups offered by organizations like your local Hospice or community groups that provide structured grief support.
All of these various places to turn serve to create spaces to tell your story and be supported. We need enough support so we don’t burn out any one small group of people who are supporting us.
The Rule of Thirds
Alan Wolfelt suggests that there are three groups of people you will encounter while grieving and these three groups are split into thirds.
One third of the people in your life will be the empathetic witnesses who will walk alongside you — not ahead of you or behind you. These people are willing to get close to your grief and feel with you what you’re feeling. They keep listening to your story until you don’t need to tell it any longer.
Another third of the people in your life will be rather neutral in their response to your grief. They won’t help you but they won’t get in the way of your grief either.
The third group of people in your life actually hurt your chances of healing and grieving thoroughly. They won’t intentionally intend to hurt you but because they are quick to judge or give advice too freely or try and pull you off grief’s path — they end up hurting your chances of eventual healing.
There are two lessons to be learned from this rule of thirds:
Be in the first group if you are supporting someone who is grieving
If you are grieving, look for and hang out with people in the first group
Three Things You Will Find in Empathetic and Supportive People
1. The ability to infuse others with hope
Those who support others in grief bring hope by believing a better future is possible and are willing to help you find a pathway to get there. I’ve seen this play out in the grief group I lead. Friends bring their friends to my grief group because they know it’s a place where they will find hope.
2. The ability to be present with you in your grief
When we are grieving, we need people to sit still while we’re sharing our pain and sad story. If someone squirms when we’re talking, it’s hard to keep going or to feel safe to keep talking.
Those present with you in your grief welcome the telling of your story “yet again.” They invite you to talk and share what’s on the inside because they know it needs to be expressed.
3. The ability to walk alongside and not lead from the front
One distinguishing quality of an empathetic witness is to walk beside. I like how Alan Wolfelt put it. “The word grieve means ‘to bear a heavy burden.’ Those who companion you in your grief realize that as they help bear your burden of sorrow, they give you hope that something good will be borne of it.”
Reflection Questions
Who is inviting you to walk beside them in their grief? What can you do to stay in the group that helps them on their journey?
If you are grieving, how are you allowing others into your life you need to help you process what you’re experiencing?
