Grief is probably the one thing that we will probably be faced with more than anything else in our lifetime. From the time we are old enough to be aware of our surroundings, there is the possibility that we will face grief in some form. When something tragic happens, we are going to grieve over the loss.
The toddler who doesn’t get her way and cries, the man at age 90 who grieves at the loss of being able to live alone in his own home, the couple who were finally able to have a child together only to lose him at two days old to death, the woman who learned her husband was having an affair … grief can strike at anytime in many situations in life.
Grief is a natural and necessary emotion. Grieving helps us to heal over hurts and painful life experiences. Our hearts and souls need to grieve to help us get past the pain, to move on, and to be able to live again. But when we live in a state of grief and don’t get past the grieving, our mental health and even physical health can be threatened. The stress caused by continued grieving can cause our bodies to become too tired causing our health could suffer.
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There are many ways to manage the grief we feel. Some are good ways and some are not so good.
Attempting to drown the grief in drinking isn’t a fix or a cure. When the alcohol wears off, the grief is still there. Taking illegal drugs won’t make the pain go away. Drugs and alcohol might make you feel better for a brief period of time, but the grief is still there. Unfortunately these are the two things that too many reach for, and they too often can’t figure out why they still hurt so much when their ‘cure’ wears off.
The best way to help deal with grieving is to talk with a close friend or loved one, someone who understands what you are going through and listens to you, perhaps even someone who is also grieving the same loss you might be dealing with. Talking with another person is healing because it helps you to say how you feel, dealing with the how you feel deep inside. Having someone to share with is a blessing and it helps so much in being able to deal with not only life’s tragedies, but the happy times as well.
Another way to help get heal from grief is to write your feelings in a journal. Writing is a great way to express feelings that often are hidden inside, feelings that we somethings cannot share with another person, even a close friend of family member. When journaling, it’s best to just be honest with your feelings and journal how you are really feeling. Write what you feel and write often!
If you are worried that someone might see the personal things you write, you can always destroy the material after it’s written. Or if you are using a shared computer and a word processing program, you can hide your writing in a folder with a name that doesn’t make it obvious what’s inside of the folder.
The main idea is that you want to be able to ‘voice’ your feelings of grief. Keeping how you feel locked away inside doesn’t help in the healing process, but rather hinders it. Getting over terrible hurts in life won’t happen overnight and it shouldn’t happen overnight. We grieve because we have lost something or someone that means so very much to us, or because we have been hurt by someone we love very much, or both. The last thing we want to do is forget the love we feel or left, or forget that part of our life. But we do want to move on past the pain, the feelings of loss, the feelings of grief.
In time, depending on what the situation is that you are grieving over, the grief will subside. Just remember that you control your emotions and how you feel, and that grieving is normal and natural and needed. But it shouldn’t control you, you control it.