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Writer's pictureMimi Rothschild

Permanent Grief Conditions & Counsel For Inextricable Grief & Sorrow


You may be 100% correct in your opinion that life is not fair. Life's happening has chomped into your grief heart and emotions permanently and intensely. Often when grievous happenings take place in one's life both physical and emotional conditions are present. The following is counsel for those who experience inextricable grief healing questions. As you experience permanent grief conditions it is my hope that as you read this article you may be buoyed up and sustained.


Life Isn't Fair

Certainly life isn't fair. Your grief condition may clearly be terrible and certainly unwanted. Shocking and appalling circumstances are now part of your life. Forever, permanent, endless, and never-ending are words not wanted in your thought pattern. As you attempt to deal with your grief and loss there are two very important understandings vital to understand. The first is that you cannot tuck your messy physical and emotional conditions into a neat little envelope. Don't even attempt to understand your grieving circumstance in one short stroke of determination. However, there are tools and knowledge you can gain which will enable you to better to better cope with your loss and future life. The second is that all grief is personal and unique. So don't try to compare your grief with anyone else's. Your grief and sorrow are like your life - individual and personal.


Stages of Grief

Learning to live with your permanent loss and grief can be better understood and dealt with by establishing a framework of understanding and knowledge. You may not experience each of the following stages of grief because, as mentioned, your grieving is personal and unique as you are. Understanding each stage can be vital and may lead you along a hopeful path of coping and peace. Personally your grief stages will not necessarily happen in a certain order. Nevertheless, it is important for you to equip yourself with every possible solution to enable you to capture a measure of happiness. Understanding the following seven stages of grief may help you best deal with your unique state of affairs.


Stage One - Denial

Immediately after a grievous happening in your life numbness and shock race to the front of your emotional line. Your heart is figuratively torn apart. You are in a state of shock and denial. You wonder if you can go on with your life. You are not sure if you want to continue. You wonder how you will survive. In your mind getting through one more day is only probable. Denying the overwhelming happening in your life helps you establish a framework for pacing your feelings of grief. Denying helps you make sense of your grief experience at your own pace. Denial helps you accept the reality of your loss and ask yourself essential questions. Unconsciously, you are beginning a grief reconciling healing path.

"There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go." ~Author Unknown


Stage Two - Anger

Anger is a normal reaction caused by horrendous grief happenings. Anger is an emotion you are most accustomed handling or at least trying to regulate. Accompanying anger are fellow travelers of pain, nothingness and helplessness. You may be angry with others, with God, and certainly with the condition you are now experiencing. Quickly, you realize your anger is focused on the fact that you can't have your old life back. Your life has changed. Dealing with the new you in the future is not an option you wish to consider. Nonetheless, anger can and often is a strength. It is an indication of your sadness and it is a bridge to travel over the chasm of your loss. It can be a temporary anchor for your ship of turbulence. Your anger is a clear indication of the deepness of your emotions and sorrow.


Stage Three - Negotiating

Negotiating to be able to wake up and return to what was before your loss is a normal grief response. Bartering to return to a happier point in time and recapture what or who you have lost is not an uncommon response. You bargain with responses like "I never again... " "Please God... " "What if I devote... " hoping your happiness will only take a short hiatus and then return to your old normal before your grief happening. Some negotiate with their pain and loss. You may try to remain in your past trying to overcome the pain and hurt you feel. The hard reality is that after negotiating unsuccessfully you become aware your bartering efforts were a useless exertion but a phase of grief many entertain and need.


Stage Four - Depression

Stages of grief may cycle between two or more stages of grief. Usually your grief is cyclical as it ebbs and flows. You don't necessarily go from stage one, then two, etc. Nor do you always experience each stage of grief. Because your circumstance is personal it is impossible to predict the grief stages you will experience and in exactly what order. Your anger stage leads you to an awareness of the present - here and now. However, the deeper you feel about your condition the more quickly it will dispel and you are better able to reconcile your grief. Depression is a primary emotion resulting from all serious grief happenings. Emptiness and loss enters your life in a deeper level than you ever imagined. Depression is an appropriate emotion to a horrendous, unbearable and sorrowful loss. As grief fully settles in your inner self and the reality and a clear awareness that you can't get your own life back, it is depressing. Grief is real and depression is a necessary step along your healing journey.


"Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it." ~Jacques Prévert


Stage Five - Acceptance

Acceptance and accommodating the reality of the new you with a new set of circumstances is not an indication that everything is okay. The healing is in the reconciling of your sorrowful circumstance. Acceptance is a phase of learning to live with a new norm. Learning how to have more good days than bad and take baby steps even though sometimes it will be one step forward and two steps back. Acceptance of your new reality no-matter-what as your permanent reality allows you to begin to live again. Acceptance rather than denying what or who you have loss allows you to listen to your needs and wants. It allows grief its time and you can begin to live a new life again. Acceptance allows you to not feel guilty wanting and seeking happiness.


"Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow." ~Rumi


Stage Six - Commitment

Unless you can make a commitment to make every effort to find peace and hope your life and expectations remain dormant. Although your grief condition can't be completely healed your peace and hope can be strengthened. It is figuratively speaking, making lemonade out of sour lemons one baby step at a time. Commitment to heal your condition is a necessary grief stage. Particularly, is commitment to heal a difficult challenge knowing your grief condition is permanent. It is vital that you understand grief will always be there for you. The healing is in reconciling your grief.


"Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them, they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight." ~ Orison Swett Marden


Stage Seven - Reconciliation

Life's most challenging conditions require digging deep into your soul like never before considered. You are at the threshold of deciding what you will do with your permanent grief circumstance. Reality is present, you cannot have your old life back. Your grief condition can't be fully healed. The healing you receive is in the reconciling of your sorrow. May you have the will to try and never give up in searching for a new confidence and self-assurance. God bless you with a measure of peace, happiness and peace.



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Mimi Rothschild

Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of the Global Grief Institute which provides Certification training programs forGrief Coach, Trauma Coach, End of Life Coach, and Children's Grief Coach. She is a survivor who has buried 3 of her children and her husband of 33 years. She is available for speaking engagements and comments to the press on any issue surrounding thriving after catastrophic loss. MEDIA INQUIRIES: Info@GlobalGriefInstitute.com

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