11/29/2022
I'm Baaaack!
It has been several months since I have blogged. For anyone who has followed this site, the lack of blogging was due to a life altering event. My husband had a heart attack in March, followed by several more, and was taken from this world on Memorial Day. Luckily, Memorial Day has never been a big deal to me, so it won’t ruin every Memorial Day for the rest of my life.
But it did leave me with a decision of whether to continue my practice. My thinking was, once I get through this I will be the greatest grief counselor ever. On the other hand, I am at a good age to retire and maybe this is the time. And on the third hand (who knew any of us had three hands, right?)—Covid and all its effects have left so many people in need of counseling that—well, the need is clear.
For now, I am returning. I just re-started my Psychology Today ad about a week ago, and I guess this is the start of my website/blogging return.
When I have done grief counseling for others, I always started by reminding them that there is no way this will ever be totally okay, that they will not wake up one day and find the person they loved and lost is alive again. What they can do, I always advised, is find a way to live with the loss, to incorporate the love and loss experiences into their total life story. I still stand by that.
One thing that I have been reminded of is the misquoting of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. When her original work “On Death and Dying” was released, she started right out by stating that not everyone goes through the grief stages she outlined in the same order, or at all. Yet I hear people saying she outlined these stage and was wrong because not everyone goes through them—exactly like she said.
The other point on which I see her misquoted, or maybe more like misinterpreted, is on the concept of Acceptance. I hear that interpreted as meaning it is okay.
Around 1978, close to a decade after the original publication of On Death and Dying, I attended several meetings of Al-Anon, which gave me a better understanding of the concept of Acceptance. Many will say that means it is okay, and that the grief is over. Acceptance means no such thing; it is simply the opposite of denial, a realization that “this is real.”
I have known several people who sorely missed someone for the rest of their own lives. There was nothing pathological about it. They reshaped their own lives in whatever ways they needed, found meaning in continuing down the own paths, and most importantly of all, they chose to live in a way that would honor their deceased loved one.
Hopefully I will follow the example those people set. That would be my primary goal.
Meantime, let’s get back to helping with clients’ problems instead of ruminating on my own.