Grief? But No One Died

Thoughts on The Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James

When my grandma died nearly 20 years ago and I was unable to attend her funeral due to a complicated pregnancy, the emotional pain was excruciating. I sobbed, stayed in bed, replayed the last time I saw her over and over, cried over her never being able to meet my child(ren), I was angry and just plain sad. And in that context, I identified my emotions as grief because a person I love died.

Then, 12 years ago, when I was going through a divorce, my therapist told me what I was experiencing was grief. I was perplexed. “What? Grief? But no one died.” She very nicely said, “Oh Andie, grief isn’t just when there is a death. It is losses of all kinds. You need to read The Grief Recovery Handbook. “ And so I did. I am not going to lie, I was reading so many self-help books at the time that I don’t remember the impact of the book except that it made me look at my life in a different way. It made me realize that many experiences up to that point were actually grief and the messaging around these experiences wasn’t always helpful.

Complicated relationships=grief

Relocation=grief

Infertility=grief

Divorce=grief

Because I hadn’t identified these experiences as grief, I hadn’t really processed them in the ways I needed. This realization after reading the book was very validating and healing. It made things make a lot more sense. I understood the pain I had felt for years that I had been told I shouldn’t feel was me grieving. It opened me up to process the hard things I had experienced. Because of the book, I now remind myself when I experience emotions after a change or loss, that I am experiencing grief and that in itself is soothing. Essentially, I give myself more freedom to feel what comes because I know I am experiencing grief.

Fast forward to this year, as I started to sort out what was next for me, I kept leaning toward doing something that focuses on grief. For whatever reason, learning about grief sparks something in me. I want to learn more, help more and understand more. Because of this, I started researching trainings I could attend to learn more about grief. I came across the training to become a specialist for the Grief Recovery Method based on this book. Truthfully, the book had fallen off my list of grief books so I re-read the book (and am reading it again). In the initial re-read, I found so many useful nuggets and validation of my beliefs about people’s grief experiences (including my own). I decided to sign up for the training so I could gain more knowledge about grief. I would definitely recommend the book if you are ready to take specific steps toward grief recovery. The great thing about this book is it provides specific tools for processing grief that, in my experience, work. It also addresses all the unhelpful things people say and dives into the fact that we aren’t taught to grieve and therefore we don’t really know how. I definitely recommend this book and the method within its pages.

You are not alone. You don’t have to be strong. You can be in the and.

*bringing a relationship to completion is the terminology used in the book. It means you have gone through all the steps of the GRM for the relationship.