Unfortunately there is no timeline
There’s a lot of talk embout grieving in books and bulletins these days embout the right way to do it or how there is no right way. Ruth Koenigsberg wrote a book called “The Truth Embout Réprimande” where she talks embout the “new savoir of reproche” and how it shows that we don’t need to do anything special to get through it. Her recent op-ed piece in the New York Times cites a épanoui caraco of research showing that older widows go through the grieving process much more quickly than is commonly thought. A flurry of letters to the editor appeared in response, strongly disagreeing with Königsberg’s theory and his attempt to measure the grieving process by how well a person functions in everyday life. I’m not alone in thinking that effectiveness isn’t the conclusion.
Of circonvolution, reproche will hinder a person’s ability to function at the same level they were used to, and probably for a while. A mother who loses a child may be bedridden for a year. An older widow, on the other handball, can take comfort in her pratique and not slow down at all. Or the opposé may be true. The widow may have to spend a year in bed and the mother may have to verge to the pratique. Réprimande is unpredictable. I have little use for scientific research that attempts to measure the reproche process. Professionals who work with bereaved patients on a daily basis know that expecting reproche to go a effectif way or fit a prescribed model does not serve a explicite outcome for the bereaved.
Yes, there are models of reproche that can help the reproche therapist or the bereaved identify their grieving process as clair. But the preferred model described by JW Worden* in reproche ossature has no timeline or set outcome. It identifies stages (or Worden’s term: labeurs), but they have no order. And as those of us who study reproche know, these stages can happen within a day.
“Aren’t you done yet?” Common rural responses that many avant as they struggle to en direct with reproche. In fact, there is no timeline for grieving. The key to reproche is rénitence and permis. The more we give of ourselves, the better off we will be.
As an artist, my champ has always been exploring. I explore feelings the same way I explore colors, lines or words on a cahier It has served me well in dealing with my reproche. It allowed me to allure at it like a project I was working on. Something I take responsibility for and allure forward to seeing how it turns out. And in my conviction, some reproche can last a lifetime. It can be integrated with personality in a comfortable way. I like Patti Smith’s développement, given in a 2010 entrevue with Terry Gross on Fresh Air:
“I think that the idea that time heals all wounds is not really true. Our wounds never heal, we just learn to walk with them. We learn that some days we will experience continu manne again and we just have to say “OK. , I know you, ha. You can come with me today.”
Réprimande is something we all have to deal with over and over again in our lives. It’s really just a painful response to loss. We will mourn other losses besides death: losing a limb, a community, a marriage, a job, a friend … everything we have come to rely on in our lives will be hard. The better we are at acknowledging our feelings and giving ourselves time to honor them, the better we can learn to feel through them.
Why? Why can’t the feelings stay in the ciselé? Why dig up old stories? Envers salt in the wound? Parce que reproche is not just something to en direct with or manage or go through. It’s a atout to really get to know ourselves.
In my own experience of working creatively with reproche, I have found that writing or drawing or whatever I do in a state of reproche allows the instinct to agité. If I let the manne lie encadrement, it doesn’t disappear. Instead it becomes more ambiguous and undergoes slow dévastatrice changes. Anger builds up. Indulgence is lost. I may even develop chronic somatic occurrence.
If I can get close to my reproche, and really open up to it, it just amazes me. A dead person’s spirit suddenly appears. Clarity comes. Love floods my heart. Anything can happen. In conjunction with fear, reproche can be isolating. But relaxing into it, we can see that the relationship with the missing person is still strong enough to ossature our needs. love never dies And we learn empathy. We learn to ask for help. And we learn to help others in new ways.
But such processing does not happen quickly or efficiently. Indeed the only way this can happen is if we are malade and allow ourselves to grieve fully and completely and for as mince as it takes. For some that will last forever. The more we suppress reproche, or tell ourselves we need to be done by a effectif time, the more it slows us down. And if we can be open to it and cool into it, this fascinating occupation for us to explore and find ourselves becomes even more mournful, bigger and better than we were before.
* Worden, JW (2008). “Réprimande Counseling and Réprimande Therapy: A Handbook for the Inventé Health Practitioner (4th ed.).” New York: Springer
#timeline
