The Human Experience of Grief

How we handle grief and the grief of others.

Two things prompted this week’s blog. One; our dear friend’s twin babies died in utero and two; I just read Brain on Fire last night, a book about the author’s experience with a really rare autoimmune encephalitis. Both circumstances are rippled with grief and how people treat someone dealing with grief.

As someone who knows grief intimately, I related to both stories deeply. When talking to our friend, she had shared the story of the twin’s death on her Facebook on the Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome Awareness Day (December 7th), the illness that took the twins. She told me people had been reaching out to her constantly to offer sympathy but to also share their own fertility, conception and baby loss struggles. It’s bittersweet being a voice for the those who can’t find theirs: you create the container for others to feel safe enough to share their own voices. But it’s also a lot on that person to handle. You’ve just dumped your own grief onto someone who is grieving. We do this so often. (More on this shortly.) What struck me about her sharing this with me was that she, the woman who had lost TWO babies, was worried about saying the wrong thing to people and was having a hard finding the right words to say in response. This woman who had gone through every mother’s worst nightmare twofold was worried for others!

She asked for my advice and I said, “humanity and pain are universal. Empathy and compassion are welcomed. Discounting and trying to offer “bumper sticker” advice (everything happens for a reason, God only gives you what you can handle, you can do it, etc.) doesn’t. This isn’t the time to people please. You have to ask for what you need and be firm when someone says the wrong thing. And never say, “it’s okay” because nothing is okay about this. “I’m sorry for your loss” or “Thank you” is all that is needed from you. Grief will teach you so much about yourself but also about others too. Humanity as a whole. We’re all awkward as fuck in tragic moments. ‘Sorry for your loss’ is a classic example. My loss? I didn’t lose anything. I didn’t misplace something only to find it later. The simple language we use is a reflection of how clueless we are. If you want to educate, educate. If you want to ignore/disregard, do so. IF you want to share in solidarity with someone else, do it if it feels right. If you need silence, be silent. There’s no right or wrong answers. Just instinct.”

Humans are uncomfortable with death. We are itchy with discomfort around grief. Most people’s instinct is to try to make it better: send a meal, bring a coffee, buy a gift, anything to make the person feel ‘better’ if only momentarily. But those are Band-Aids on a gushing wound. Grief doesn’t simply go away. It lingers, festers, burrows into the skin like a tick and prepares for life alongside you. Like I said to my friend, it does change you.

You become stronger and hopefully, more forgiving. You understand that people say all the wrong things for all the right reasons. Our friends and family and even strangers want to sympathize and connect and make it “better.” But there is nothing anyone can do to make anything better. It’s a solo endeavour, one that requires a lot of time, patience and grace.

In the book I read last night, Cahalan’s body attacks her brain making her incredibly ill. Her descent into the illness and her subsequent recovery was painful to witness by the sounds of it, heartbreaking really. To spare you the science of what the illness did to her brain, she was catatonic at points, lost her facial function, ability to speak and experienced psychosis throughout. But her friend’s and family’s reaction to her when she was released was incredibly awkward. Trying to fill the silence (she lagged in response times and still couldn’t speak well after discharge) with jokes and loud chatter was stiff and bumbling. The looks of pity barely concealable. The comments (“Do you think she’ll ever get back to her old self again?”) were hurtful to her family. However, it is commonplace. It’s the human experience, one that’s fuelled by fear.

A fear of death layered with the innate desire to heal, help and comfort leaves us in these awkward positions. I do have a diagram though given to me after one of my four pregnancy losses and it’s helped me and anyone I’ve shared it with in knowing how grief needs to move. You never dump on the the griever. You dump out. So if I’m grieving, my best friend doesn’t dump her grief over it onto me. She dumps out onto her husband or mom or other friend. She expends her grief but also finds the strength to be there for me in the ways I need. Then her mom, husband or friend dumps out further: her husband, her friend, her therapist. Never back on her daughter because she needs to be there for me and can’t carry any more grief. It’s really brilliant and quite helpful.

I remember after my second loss, a friend came over to bring gifts from our friends and she started crying in my entry way telling me how sorry she was. While I knew she was a sensitive soul, it shifted the grief flow. Now I was the one telling her, “its okay” because I didn’t want nor need someone crying in my house when my grief couldn’t handle anyone else’s grief (because really, I see sympathy as a mild form of grief). It was one of many awkward encounters I would have over my four year secondary infertility journey.

But it taught me a valuable lesson in learning to sit with the hard stuff. To sit and cry and wail and scream and feel sorry for myself for a bit. To question God and the Universe and humanity and the intentions of others. To physically feel sick to my stomach and feel the grief moving through my veins. To not need to be ‘better’ and certainly not better on anyone else’s timeline. To really, deeply feel my way through it.

All of it a precursor for healing, to finding a new way of being in the world in a new body, a new mind and an altered soul. It can make you or break you. I truly believe it depends on how much time you allot for true grieving, true loving.