The Healthy Grieving process often helps people let go of far more than just the loss they set out to grieve – and can uncover surprising things.

I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing or having people share a wide variety of outcomes from this process, but one of the most extraordinary stories for me was the experience of a woman grieving the death of her grandfather – and what was uncovered as a result.

When she was 13, her grandfather was dying and the family was going to the hospital to visit him one particular night.  But she had been invited to a sleepover at a friend’s house and made the choice to do that instead, thinking she could go visit her grandfather the next day. However, he died that night, so she didn’t get to say goodbye.

She carried quite a bit of guilt and regret over her decision and how she missed saying goodbye to him. She also had felt, at the time, that compared to other members of the family, she wasn’t as upset over his death as she should be, especially given the grief and drama that a death is supposed to engender in a close Italian family.  She was afraid that she was bad or wrong in how she was reacting, and because of that, she pretended to be more upset than she was. . . . so she felt like a fake and a fraud on top of her other confusing feelings.  She was also afraid that maybe she was a selfish or bad person because she didn’t like how unhappy her home had become, and she felt more concerned about how his death was impacting her family than feeling sad about her grandfather actually being gone. She said that his death had marked the end of her childhood and the end of her innocence, which in itself seems like a big loss to grieve . . .  but something else remained to be uncovered.

As she followed the steps in the Healthy Grieving process, what was revealed was that as a result of her experience, she developed a deep belief that she makes bad decisions that can have horrible consequences, and that she could not be trusted to make good decisions in her life. During her session, she realized that this underlying belief had affected her her whole life.

After completing the grieving process, she said that by letting this go, she was more comfortable with herself, “comfortable in her own skin,” comfortable with her decisions, and able to trust herself in a new way.

“I am still careful in my decision making,” she reported, “but I don’t feel that same weight and fear. What’s really different is that now, when things don’t go the way I want them to or don’t go well, in the past that would have created a downward spiral for me and it would take a lot of remediation and self-talk to get myself back up. Now, I don’t even go there any more, let alone have to talk myself back up. Now, instead of that spiral cascade down over even the smallest bad decision or mistake – and the dire consequences that would ensue — I feel comfortable and confident.”

“What is so interesting and enlightening,” she reported, “is that I really had no idea that this underlying belief was bundled in with the feeling of regret that I missed saying goodbye to my grandfather. And I had no idea how much it affected my day-to-day life.”

“Somehow, with the Healthy Grieving process, I was able to let it all go — judging myself for how I reacted to his death, wondering what was wrong with me that he and I weren’t closer, guilt over my decision, missing saying goodbye and of course the big issue of not trusting myself and my choices. Somehow it all got magically released and I am at peace.”

Wow!  From regret over not saying goodbye to one’s grandfather before he died, to uncovering a lifetime of second-guessing oneself and one’s decisions . . . . this is a great example of the far-reaching effects that the Healthy Grieving process can have.

One of the foundational principles of the Healthy Grieving process is that you cannot heal if you feel like a victim in your experience of loss.

Often in a workshop or training, therapists – and particularly trauma therapists who deal with people who actually were victims in a traumatic event –find this concept challenging. The other day in a workshop one of the therapists asked, “Well, what if the person actually was a victim – for example in a violent crime?” and the trainer answered, “For the purposes of the Healthy Grieving process, it doesn’t matter.”

And there was a palpable reaction to that response in the room.

But then a cool thing happened.

Without any prearrangement, our volunteer that day (we always have a volunteer go through the process in the front of the room so attendees get to witness the process in action) became the perfect example and demonstration of the principle.

The grief he wanted to let go of was being taken away from the loving foster home he lived in from age three to age six.  The grief from that loss was, as he described it, “still alive in him” all these years later.

You could hardly think of a more traumatic event for a little child than finally finding a place of safety, love and belonging – and being wrenched away from that with no warning.  His description of holding onto the front door knob for dear life as two adults tried to drag him away was heartrending.

Yet for the purpose of the grieving process — for going back to that moment and feeling the feelings and letting them go and taking back what part of himself was lost in that experience — the fact that he was or wasn’t a “victim of a trauma” did not play into it.  In fact, if he had spent any time blaming his mother for giving him up in the first place, the social workers for taking him, the foster parents for letting him go, or any outside force, the healing experience would not have happened.

In the Healthy Grieving process, the external event – traumatic or otherwise – is not the focus.  It is a completely internal process where the part of ourselves that was lost gets reclaimed — and that can only be done with an internal focus.  If any part of us is taking the stance that what happened should or shouldn’t have happened and/or who was responsible, or who was to blame, we put the power outside of ourselves.

We have to take the power back in order to heal.  We have to understand that it is our response to the event (that our experience of the event is where the loss actually takes place) that needs to be healed — not the event itself.

And that can be hard to understand.

Until you see it in action.