The Holidays are often a time that many look forward to each year but for others serves as a reminder that life is not the same. While there are no ways to change that loved ones are not here with us, there are ways that we can process the grief that at times feels overwhelming. Grief is something that all of us are guaranteed to experience in this life. And though it will be experienced by everyone, each person is going to process it differently. The key is to find ways and outlets to express that grief. Here are five strategies to help manage and cope with grief.
Find Ways For Their Legacy to Live On
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All of the unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” Jamie Anderson
You can find ways to express the love that you would want to give but cannot. While they may not physically be here to hug or participate, you can find ways that their legacy can live on. Many sponsor events such as golf tournaments or running events and donate the money to a cause that their loved one supported. Some purchase benches or seats in the honor of their loved one. However, it can also be as simple as doing and act of service or something that they would have done in their honor. For instance, you can go and collect all the carts in a busy shopping center, make their favorite cookie or meal and bring it to someone else, pay for a drink or a meal of the person behind you, donate a newborn outfit to the hospital in their honor. Finding a way to have their honor or legacy live on is a very cathartic way to process grief.
Rituals
Rituals also have a great role in being able to express grief. Hiking on their favorite trail, leaving a pebble on their headstone when you visit, releasing their favorite color balloon, watching old videos or looking through photo albums on their birthday. Rituals and activities such as these allow you to send a postcard that “I remember you” or a way to say “Thinking of you” when those moments come.
Physical Momentos
Physical reminders also serve as a way to process grief. From pillows or blankets made from old shirts, necklaces made from their handwriting, birthstone or handprint, a token from items they collected that can be displayed, being able to physically hold something when you cannot hold your love one is an avenue that has shown to make a big difference in expressing grief. Just this past week, a friend whose brother had recently passed away from cancer wore his shirt to the movie theater to watch Star Wars. Physical momentos are a powerful way to express and process grief.
Find An Expression
There is a lyric from a song released this year by Craig Morgan. He wrote it as an expression of grief in tribute to his son who passed away in a drowning accident. “My boy’s not here, but he ain’t gone.”
It is important to be able to find an expression for your grief whether from art, writing poems, lyrics or a song, or even just journaling. Grief is not something that can be controlled and is often just under the surface but when you have an avenue to express the grief you are feeling, it becomes manageable. The pain is still there but that pain becomes a reminder of the love and then the love has an outlet to be expressed.
Reach Out
If there is one thing that you could do to help someone who is grieving, it is simply this–allow them to have an expression. Sometimes we fear causing them pain by bringing up old memories and feeling like we are opening up old wounds, but the most pain they feel is when the rest of the world isn’t grieving and recognizing their grief. So what can you do? Remember them. Allow them an avenue to talk about their loved one. Unexpressed or suppressed grief is painful. When the grief surfaces, allow them the space and avenues to express it. Those who have researched grief have found that the number one difference made in dealing with grief was the support the person felt while they were experiencing it. You can be that difference for someone.
No matter how old you are, no matter what your gender, your education level, how much money you have, where you live…we will all experience grief. While we will all experience it differently, finding ways to express and process this grief will allow us all to manage the role that grief plays in our lives.
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For more information and to understand the grief that you might be experiencing or the grief a loved one is going through, here is a quick article:
Practically Speaking With Brita 