There is a Grief Process When Going Through Divorce
Grief-The inexplicable pain that overtakes the body, opening the flood gates to torrential tears and sorrow. Unending nights filled with sleeplessness and agonizing thoughts. Silent darkness shrouded with feelings of self-loathing mixed in with horrific nightmares.
Feelings of loss can be so overwhelming they immobilize our movement, cloud judgment, and disrupt motivation. Thoughts of self-harm can emerge and further cloud judgment.
These symptoms hover and keep us from walking through the doorway that leads to healing. It is at this doorway where many linger for far too long. For healing to occur, we must push away from the comfort of our sadness and the denial of our loss and step into the realm of grief work.
At times you might believe that you are stuck because you feel your grief is not legitimate; or because of guilt or shame feelings of being undeserving prevent the journey forward. In a short article from the Mayo Clinic, grief is a result of a loss. To name a few, losses can result from accident, illness, death, a terminal disease, or lifestyle change. Divorce and the loss of relationship is also a traumatic experience and requires the process of grief work.
This week I’ve read several quotes and memes on grief. Each echoed that the greater we love, the greater the cavernous feelings of loss. And as we find ourselves without what has always been, our lives shake and crumble before us, and all we sometimes believes remains is an overwhelming feeling of loss. This change removes the familiar landscape and hides peace, though loss and feelings of grief cannot extinguish peace forever.
We could protect ourselves and decide not to risk love. But if we remain safely tucked away from the intimacy of loving others in an effort to avoid the depth of loss, have we really lived at all? Yet, if we do love deeply, grief will one day come to each of us. Grief work takes us on a journey-quest that no one chooses joyfully, but a road we all must one day travel.
Loss in divorce is such a journey. And to recover, we must grieve. We cannot linger at the door or we will end up like Dorothy on her way to Oz, numb and immobile, lying still in the poppy field of self-pity as life goes on around us. Just as Dorothy was carried out of the field by her two friends, sometimes we must lean on others for a while until we become stronger.
Stepping through the doorway into the unknown, into the depths of our grief, allows the scary process to begin. Some may not understand how divorce, and the loss of a beloved who is still alive, can bring on such agonizing emotions. It can be difficult for others to understand why we are depressed and grieving, especially if the marriage was toxic or abusive.
If someone you love is experiencing loss, remember that each person’s experience of loss and pain are real.
The death of a loved one is permanent. Within the grief of divorce lies the realization that the dream we had of forever together is dead. Having to go on without the partner reminds us of this fact. There is no clean break. The promise of the relationship will never be realized.
A beautiful book on grief, divorce, and loss is Kay Twombley’s Where Was God When I Cried. She points out that in order to move past the loss we must complete several things:
- Recognize the loss.
- Speak your pain out loud to someone. (Find someone who will listen with compassion)
- Survey the damage from the loss: I believe this can be done in many ways: written out in letters or in a journal, shared with a friend or therapist, or expressed in personal essays, or even play acted out. But however you choose to recognize and speak verbally about the loss, it is an essential part of moving through grief.
- Give yourself time to heal
- Implement self-care
- Utilize your faith resources
Finding Meaning, a book by David Kessler, co-authored by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, outlines five stages of grief for the dying and the six stages of grief for the divorced.
Moving through these stages requires that we validate our loss and do the painful and difficult work of moving through the stages of grief. Although this journey may be terrifying at times, but we will grow and change as a person.
Sometimes we will travel alone, and sometimes we will lean on others because our strength is gone. It is through reaching out that we generate the ability to access God’s strength and the strength of others’ when ours is depleted.
Healing begins the moment you step through the doorway and begin braving the journey, even though you may not feel it yet.
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting those we have loved or pretending they never existed at all; our strength and resilience comes from pulling meaning from the ashes of our loss, and in so doing we experience new realizations that improve our lives while allowing ourselves to remember the good — because there was some good.
I would love to hear how you have grown, changed, and found beauty from the ashes of your own loss and learned to live and love again. Not only in romance, but learning to love other people and allowing others to love you again.
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” (Isaiah 54:10; NIV).
Originally published at https://lchelmsauthorblog.com on April 6, 2021.
