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.