The Harvest of your Grief Work

I am sharing this article from a TCF newsletter because it addresses exactly what I have been working on in counseling.  It's so hard to separate the pain from our child after carrying it for so long!

“It just isn’t right! I go a month sometimes and don’t cry. I actually get involved in something and don’t think abut my daughter for hours. I had fun at the company picnic last week. I feel so guilty. Am I forgetting my daughter?”
The mother who said this to me was two years into her grief. She was doing good grief work…leaning into the pain, talking out her feelings, expressing emotions and attending Bereaved Parent meetings. But was she hurting less?
When parents begin to reap the harvest of grief work well done, they fear they are losing their children. The truth is that they are doing just that….reaping the harvest of their grief work well done. In the first couple of years pain ties us to our children. During that time we equate pain with love. By the time we are beginning to resolve our grief work and that is what is happening, the pain has been our companion for so long, we feel lost without it.
This is one of the few places in grief where our minds need to take over for awhile. We need to look at the illogic of prolonged grieving. We need to see that we are beginning to reach the goal we had hoped some day to reach.
Self talk can help rid ourselves of this illogical emotion. As yourself…

• If you believe that to keep your child in your heart for the rest of your life is wrong.
  
• Will your prolonged misery make your child any less dead?
  
• Does the fact that your child has died mean you must die also?
  
• Does your prolonged misery accomplish anything? What purpose does it serve?
  
• Will hanging on to your pain make you grow and change or will it make you unhappy and bitter?
  
• What effect will your prolonged grief have on your marriage and/or surviving children?
  
• Do you really want to stay in the pit of grief indefinitely?
  
• Will your continuing pain honor your child?
  

These questions can help you see that beginning grief resolution is as healthy and normal after a couple of years as allowing yourself to enter into your grief in the early months after your child died.
Rethink your reactions. Let yourself get to the other side of your grief. Let yourself appreciate the peace and comfort that is beginning to be yours.
Most importantly, let yourself fee the joy of remembering your child without the deep searing pain you have felt for so long.

—Margaret Gerner
Arthur’s Mother
Emily’s Grandmother
BP/USA St. Louis, MO