This is a month-long series to support persons grieving and those who love them.  It includes content from “Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook” available through Amazon and wherever books are sold.

            We face a huge temptation to see grief as something we can work through and get over, but it usually isn’t that easy.  When I face anything challenging and get impatient to be done with it, my mentor will remind me, “It’s a process, not an event”. 

            To get myself through hard times, I’ll often remind myself of what a former pastor used to tell me when I was in grad school, “Remember, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not a train.” 

           When I find myself wanting to take shortcuts through any emotional struggle, I get to slow myself down with the words, “There is no shortcut.  The only way out is through.”

            But each of these imply there’s an endpoint.  With grief, that’s not necessarily the case; it’s the new story with which we get to live.  The fact of the loss, and all the change that comes with it, doesn’t go away.

            In the early pages of Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook, I wrote the following about this concept: 

We often speak in terms of a grief journey, as if there is a hypothetical endpoint we can reach.  Even theoretical models intended to help us understand and explain what happens through grief use words such as ‘tasks’ or ‘stages’ or the ‘process’ of grief, as if there’s something we are required to complete or overcome in order to be happy again…

I may use these words, as well, because language is, at times, limited.  It is not my intention to imply that there is a destination to get to, an end in sight, or that this workbook will help you get there and be done with grief.  I can’t in good faith promise you that.

As my friend, Janie Cook, writes:

“The journey is our story.  There is no destination, no resting place to reach, no final answer.  There is simply the journey we take and the story we live with our feet, with our heart.  We may stop along the way to rest—not because we have arrived, but to take this part in a little more deeply.  We may pause to listen or savor a threshold, but the journey is our story, The Story.  Each obstacle we overcome, each companion treasured, each grief suffered is a sacred moment along the way.”

Grief doesn’t necessarily end for everyone.  In fact, many would argue that it never ends, it just shifts and changes over time and gets a bit easier to live with as we gradually find ways to integrate such a major change into our lives.  We find ways to honor the life we miss; hold onto the good memories; make peace with the not-so-good ones; build a new relationship with the person who is no longer physically there; and find ways to continue living our lives.

Often, because our relationships help define us—as grandchild, child, sibling, spouse, parent, friend—we must go through the process of re-imagining our own identity when that person is gone.  While all of this is a process, it is far from formulaic.  There are no linear, prescribed formulas for what grief should look like.”

(From the chapter, “How to Use This Workbook” in Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook, by Carla Cheatham, SCIE Publishing ©2016)

          So, I write in terms of walking with grief because sometimes that’s our only option.  I also want to acknowledge that, at times, the grief we walk with isn’t our own; we walk with another as they live with theirs. 

          All of it can be scary and overwhelming.  Even if we have gone through it before, each circumstance and individual experience is unique and we wonder if we’re doing it right; we wonder what to do, what to say, how to be. 

          My hope is that this series will lend a little insight to let you know that you are not crazy, you are not alone, and that you will find your way.   

          I’m glad you’re with me on the journey.

Peace,

Carla     

Rev. Carla Cheatham, MA, MDiv, PhD, TRT has served hospices as a chaplain and bereavement coordinator.  She’s the Section Leader for the Spiritual Caregivers Section of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and an adjunct professor at the Seminary of the Southwest.  Through her Carla Cheatham Consulting Group, Carla provides training and consulting for professional caregivers nationwide.  She is the author of Hospice Whispers: Stories of Life and its companion volume, Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook.  Her next book, On Showing Up with Suffering: Others’ and Our Own, is set to publish in 2017.