How do you make meaning in times of grief?
To be sure, there are periods in the grief process when completing the simplest of tasks requires Herculean effort. But, if we can manage to find meaning, we’re more likely to experience good grief.
I wrote about this in my last post, here. There is a paradox in good grief: it takes energy, time, and reflection, but meaning fuels focus, direction, passion and perseverance.
As author David Kessler writes in, Finding Meaning: the Sixth Stage of Grief (Scribner, 2019), “Grief is extremely powerful.” Fortunately, there is even more power in acceptance.
Meaning becomes more powerful as it moves from being negative to positive, external to intrinsic, and from self to others.
4 Tips to Manage Grief
In a Harvard Business Review article (March 2020), Kessler offered four practical tips:
- Find balance in the things you’re thinking. Recognize catastrophizing, rumination, denial, anesthetizing, etc.
- Come into the present. If you haven’t already, practice mindfulness and/or meditation. State a feeling, identify an object, but don’t attach yourself to either. For example, rather than say, “I am angry”, say, “there is anger.”
- Let go of what you can’t control. Focus on what you can.
- Stock up on compassion. If you find yourself judging the behavior of someone else, add the word “yet” to the story you are telling yourself about their behavior. For example, “They are taking a huge risk by ___. I have never ___, yet.”
You’ll know you’ve moved into a state of acceptance when you can acknowledge what has/is happening and take steps to move forward.
4 Tips to Make Meaning
Only you can make meaning for yourself. When you are ready:
- Practice compassion for self and others: your loss is not a test/lesson, or a gift/blessing, rather, it is a loss. Making meaning is your response to a loss.
- Allow your meaning to be personal and relative to your unique experience; understanding “why” is not necessary.
- Give yourself plenty of time to make meaning: months, or even years.
- Understand that making meaning is not the same as obtaining justice; there will still be loss after meaning is found. But meaningful connections can heal painful memories.
What do you think? How do you make meaning in times of grief? I’d love to hear from you. I can be reached here, on LinkedIn, or give me a call: 561-582-6060.
