Five Practices to Keep You Moving When Grieving

Grief is an unavoidable part of life because loss is unavoidable.

What are we talking about when we talk about grief?

The dictionary defined grief this way:

Grief is keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.

Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior. — Russell Friedman

Grief is not a one size fits all process. It varies in intensity between people and depends on the nature of the loss. My grief was different after my motorcycle accident in 2011 compared to the grief I experienced after my wife Vicky died in 2020.

It’s also true that my grief was not one continuous experience but was staggered and unpredictable. It came in waves, broken up by new experiences of loss and adversity. The afflictions I faced touched every corner of my life —mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational.

Learning to Grieve Well

Learning how to grieve well or experience good grief is essential because if we don’t, we end up getting stuck in our pain and are unable to integrate our loss into the life we have now.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. — Leo Tolstoy

Good grief sounds like an oxymoron — two contrasting ideas that don’t quite fit together — but is desirable when properly understood. Good grief is thorough grief that marks the pathway for the healing we seek after the wounds of loss.

Good grief embraces the positive elements that keep us from getting stuck or stalled indefinitely when in our grief.

Good grief leans into the pain of loss and learns more about self and others.

Five Practices to Keep You Moving When Grieving

1. Be honest with yourself

If you try to tough it out after a serious loss, you will only hinder the grieving process. Honesty comes in pieces that need to observed and process as they come. The moment you deny your feelings and thoughts is the moment your grief might stall.

He who conceals his grief finds no remedy for it. — Turkish Proverb

2. Share your grief with trustworthy friends

There’s a time to be left alone in your grief but equally true is the need for the support, love and empathy of traveling companions. Seek them out, let them in and keep your grief moving.

Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief. — French Proverb

3. Use poems, prayers, and quotations to express your grief

Sometimes you can’t find the words to express how you feel. When that happens, borrow the words of others. I do this daily because I forget what’s true or simply do not know what to say or how to say it.

Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. — from The Wonder Years

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief — but the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love. — Hillary Stanton Zunin

4. Practice patience

When traveling through grief, be willing to travel at a new speed — SLOW! You can’t rush grief and will be better off in the long run if you learn patience in your grief.

Grief makes one hour ten. — William Shakespeare

5. Let yourself feel deeply and cry as necessary

Tears are God’s built in relief value for the hurts of life. Let them flow. I have learned to not be embarrassed by tears but I do try to choose where I will let them flow.

What soap is for the body, tears do for the soul. — Jewish saying

Tears water our growth. — William Shakespeare

Final Thought

Grief expert Alan Wolfelt gives this important reminder.

Grief never truly ends because love never ends. People do not ‘get over’ grief because they do not ‘get over’ the love that caused the grief. - Wolfelt

I’ve learned to frame grief as ongoing knowing it will change as I grow and heal. My grief now, three years after losing Vicky, still exists but looks and feels very different. I continue to practice these actions and as I do, find myself continuing to move in the direction of living.

As you reflect on your losses, may you embrace the ongoing need to grieve and find your grief thorough and good for soul, mind, and body.