Forget the stages and the promise of an orderly, timed, step-by-step grief process. Life after loss is like being thrown into a new world: one that you never wanted to be on, yet you cannot leave. Now, you must reconstruct who you are in this new world. Missing what or whom you lost is going to be a part of that new you. However, even in this new, post-loss, far-from-best world, you can be the best version of that new self. This is what we’re working toward – not ending grief, or living as if the loss never happened, but living well with it.
How? One tiny step after the other. Think about literal baby steps: they don’t start with the first step, they start with crawling backward. Yet, in most cases, they learn to walk. Forward! Somehow, after that, we tend to think in big leaps. But change happens when we notice the tiny moments, the baby steps. By acknowledging that, just like the baby learning to sit, stand and walk - we’ll sometimes fall, and that is okay, it’s part of life. By giving ourselves both the grace of acknowledging that grief is real and it sucks, and the grace of looking for the steps we can take to make our lives better, in a less-than-better world.
Growing life after loss vs. Stages (AKA Jar Theory)
In 1996, Dr. Lois Tonkin published and article titled: Growing Around Grief: another way of looking at grief and recovery. In 2021, The Ralph Site made it into this beautiful infographic: you can see how the ball remains the same, but the jar - us, our lives - grows.
I love this metaphor– the ball drops into the jar that is our lives, scatter and breaks everything. Then, we reassemble ourselves in a new way, and life grows. The grief stays the same, yet now it takes less space. Sometimes, it moves, something brushes against it, and we feel it more intensively, before it goes to its place, being a part of who we are.
