Although it is not officially one of the six steps of the Healthy Grieving process, we sometimes begin the process by defining the relationship to the person being grieved. This requires diving deep, being brave, and being honest (Step #1 of the process) because the actual relationship is often not obvious or not what we have told ourselves.
For example, a daughter, when asked to define her relationship with her mother, started by saying, “I was her daughter.” But when asked to go a little deeper and describe the relationship more accurately, she realized, “I was a caretaker to my mother.”
A married woman who lost her husband might easily say that she was a wife to her husband, but the actual relationship might be better described as a needy child who was taken care of by her husband – or, on the flip side, sometimes a woman is a mother to her husband and takes care of him.
A girl whose older brother had died started by describing the relationship as one of brother and sister, but taken a little deeper, realized that the actual relationship was that she was an admirer who worshipped her older brother but was always ignored by him.
Another woman in grieving her father realized that the relationship wasn’t really a father/daughter relationship; they were more peers, and indeed she was often the more emotionally mature person in the relationship.
Other examples include: My mother was my biggest fan. I was a competitor to my sister. I was a parent to my little brother. I was a subject to my wife who was my boss. My best friend was my buffer from aloneness. I was a buddy to my dad, a trophy to my boyfriend, a meal ticket to my wife.
The point of the exercise is to look beneath the label (daughter, son, friend, grandfather, husband, wife, etc.) and ask yourself what was the real relationship or the actual dynamic.
Why is this important?
One of the most basic principles of the Healthy Grieving process is that “no healing can take place at the level of a story.” It is common for someone to start with one description – “We were very close, we were soul mates, we had a wonderful marriage, I adored my older brother, my sister was my best friend” – and end up somewhere quite different.
Starting the grieving process by honestly describing the relationship to the person you have lost can help get underneath the story of the relationship to the actual dynamic. This can be a powerful first step on in being honest, which is an important prerequisite to real and lasting healing.