Using Paul Taubman’s suggestion for today’s blog in the Ultimate Blogging Challenge, I decided to share an article from ezine articles.

Do You Understand Your Grief?

By Duane Marchant  |   Submitted On May 06, 2014

To gain new essential understanding about your grief is strategic to moving through your sorrow. Before you can begin a healing journey you must understand your Grief. Clarity about your personal circumstance is absolutely necessary for you to be able to embrace the best solutions for your happiness. Grieving is complex and confusing. Your personal sorrow is unique to you and you alone. Understanding your private sorrow is important to you because you grieve differently. Your unique grieving and healing process is distinctive to you. Do you understand your grief?

Grief is real:

Grief is a powerful force that settles in your heart and mind like a dark heavy fog. Your vision is clouded, your confidence in self is uncertain. Your heartbreak is difficult to describe; sorrow is unexplainable. Grieving is personal and unique to each individual. Some struggle mightily with sorrow-more than once. Others seemingly never have horrific sadness. Nonetheless, the grief you experience is real.

Your sorrow may feel like fear:

You fear what you understand. You fear what you don't understand. You fear the unknown. Your cause for your grief is only one of thousands of reasons why bereavement is experienced throughout the world. Perhaps, your grief is awkward, often painful and complex. Your grief is seldom, if ever, planned for and certainly not invited. Usually your grief is never one emotion. Your sorrow may be mixed up with many other feelings. Your grief may actually feel so much like fear.

Your Grief may make you feel powerless and vulnerable:

Typically, grief is accompanied by an avalanche of partners-sorrow, fear, hopelessness, and uncertainty. Grief is like 15,000 puzzle parts scattered on the table, peculiar in every way to circumstance and personal to you. You feel like you are sitting at the table trying helplessly to put the sorrow puzzle together blind folded. There you sit feeling washed up, powerless and vulnerable.

You should feel no shame admitting your grief:

Grief is always a matter of relativity. Your sorrow is measured by its proportion to you. A laceration is as painful as an amputation to another. It is a wasted effort for you to compare the extent or severity of your sorrow with others. Your grieving is real it is personal and exclusive to you. Your grief clock keeps its own time. Your clock tells the correct time. Grief for one is often not understood by another. Personal grief is complicated, complex, and confusing. You should feel no shame admitting your grief than if you were affirming acknowledgment of a broken leg. Far more important is recognition of your grief as you struggle for peace and understanding.

It is important for you to understand the forces of grief:

Your extreme sorrow is more than discouragement, more than a bad day at the office. Grief is like a merry-go-round it goes round and round as you ride the grief horse you go up and down. Grief is cyclical; enduring it as you move through it is best accomplished as you understand the forces of horrific grieving. Don't be ashamed of the foregoing mentioned emotions. They are tangible.

The depth of your sadness may seem everlasting:

Grief affects many throughout the world in innumerable ways. Compassion and empathy is needed for those who lost loved ones through death, cancer patients, amputees, the wounded warriors, the bed-ridden, those with serious medically diagnosed conditions, and those whose hearts ache because of a multiplicity of other causes. Your great struggle with the depth of the sorrow you experience may seem everlasting. Nevertheless, your peculiar grief is absolutely real. Heart ache to one is often not understood by another; however your sadness and anguish are present.

Healing is possible when you understand your grief:

It is likely that you reflected upon the foregoing expressions as grief bullet points to ponder. Only when you understand what grief is, and how powerful it can imprison your thoughts, emotions, and even your whole persona, can you begin to work through your grief. Understanding your grief and what you can do about healing helps you begin your healing journey to a healthier happy place in your life. Remember in the world of grief and sorrow, healing begins with you.

You are about to discover 7 Effective Strategies for Overcoming Grief and Reclaiming Your Joy. Visit http://www.griefreliefacademy.com/ to get your FREE 7 day audio and e-course. ($97 value)

Duane Marchant is a Grief Relief Specialist who supports men and women throughout the world. He is an amputee, author, speaker, coach and founder of Grief Relief Academy. He believes life is precious and dedicates his time to healing hearts and drying eyes, one at a time.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Duane_Marchant/1845615

*Note from Debra:

I really appreciated the author’s statement about the necessity of gaining clarity about our personal grief.  I was divorced from my former spouse 22 years prior to his death.  During the last few months of his life, I supported my children and him through end of life decision making and care.

A few weeks following his death, I could not explain my tearfulness, sleep disturbance, irritability, and dreams to mention a few things.  Eventually, I realized I was grieving his death.  I was shocked!  It was as the author suggest, like 15,000 scattered puzzle pieces.

When I shared my discovery with others, I felt judged.  They did not understand why I would feel grief over a former spouse.  Truth is, I was having trouble understanding.  I did eventually come to understand the concept of disenfranchised grief, as defined by Ken Doka, 

“Grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned or publicly mourned”. 

My grief was real!  The article’s author acknowledged and validated my grief experience.