List Your Grief

Often, people come to me because they’ve realized that their grief is impacting their life in a profound way, yet they aren’t really sure what to do about it. “Mandee, I need to process this, I need to make a change, I need figure out what’s going on.” I hear it a lot. And I also hear confusion. Grievers tell me all sorts of reasons why they think their grief should take up less space or be less confusing.

“He was just a dog.” “It’s been two whole years since Dad died.” “I really didn’t know her as intimately as others.” “My divorce is in the past.”

But anxiety, pain, depression, irritability, insomnia, and body-aches are telling you that there is more here than meets the eye. Listen to these signals, because there is something they are calling you to do.

The beauty of the practice I’m about to share is how it illuminates how far-reaching your grief is. There is a reason you are feeling anxious, or foggy, or disconnected, or like you are moving through mud, or drowning beneath an invisible sea of things you don’t understand. Our lives are deeply impacted when we experience loss and the best way to process it is to be truly, deeply aware of just how severely all the strings of our life’s tapestry are pulled when just one of them gets brutally ripped out. I’m guessing that you’ve experienced more than just one loss in your life though. You’ve probably experienced many.

So here is what you’re going to do…

You are simply going to make a list and you are going to list every thing you have evergrieved. I really, truly mean every thing. Everything you’ve ever lost that’s impacted your life in a profound way.

Most obviously this list is going to include deaths you’ve experienced. Perhaps your mom or dad died, or maybe you lost a sibling or grandparent or a child or best friend. These are the obvious things you are going to put on your list. And I also want you to list things that are NOT death-related. This might be a best-friendship that ended, or perhaps you lost your career, or were diagnosed with a life-altering illness, or you’ve moved from a town that you loved and considered home and feel untethered from security and community. We really deeply grieve those kinds of losses too.

Now the next step is where the magic happens… once you have completed your list of grieved losses, you’re going to go through each thing you listed and you’re going to list the secondary losses that accompanied the main loss. So, this would be something like, if you put a divorce on that list, a secondary loss in this case might be that you lost your sense of community. I bet there was a friend group or two that you hung out with as a couple and now that you are no longer part of a couple you no longer get invited to do things with that group. That’s a loss. You’ve probably also had to give up memberships, change subscriptions, find new professionals to support you in various areas (banking, auto maintenance, pet sitters, etc.) Those are all losses as well.

Let’s say your initial loss was the loss of your mother. A secondary loss might be your sense of safety, moving through the world may feel precarious now that you don’t have your first protector here with you anymore. With the loss of your mother you’ve also lost a witness to your history. You no longer have that one person who knew you through all the varied stages of your life. Losing this witness is an extremely painful secondary loss. You might feel extreme despair or sorrow when Mother’s Day rolls around and feel disconnected from mother energy. That’s another loss.

Another big one is religion. When people leave a religion behind they lose so much more than just a belief. They often lose their community and they lose rituals and ceremonies that brought them comfort. A biggie here is also a lost hope in an afterlife. They no longer have an idea of what to believe about what happens after we die. This kind of existential secondary loss can be extremely terrifying and trying to find comfort within this loss is usually exhausting.

The thing about secondary losses is that they often go unacknowledged. So when somebody tells me they are trying to process their grief, I like to focus in on where these secondary losses are that they may be experiencing. Often, by just listing them out and seeing how far reaching their grief is, is enough to bring a sense of acceptance. There’s often a “Wow! I had no idea I was carrying so much. No wonder I feel hopeless (or scattered, or exhausted, or anxious etc).” I welcome this moment of awareness and acceptance when I’m working with grievers.

Because here’s the thing about our grief… we MUST accept that we are feeling it. It’s only after we’ve accepted that we are feeling it, only after we’ve acknowledged it and honored the place that it has in our life, that we can make sense of what’s happened to us. It’s only then that we can learn to flow with our grief instead of hopelessly flailing against an indomitable current in perpetuity.

And it’s ultimately how we can find meaning within our experience of our loss.

I’d love to hear more about your experience of secondary losses. If you feel called, please do share with me in the comments. Something I love so much about the grief community is how much we all learn from each other. Love and hugs to you today. xx