Making Our Way through Grief and Loss
/Recently, we’ve been thinking about grief and loss. These are fundamentally human experiences and a couple of the main reasons people seek out counseling. Live long enough and we all become familiar with the grief that comes on unexpectedly—with the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the experience of a natural disaster or other calamitous event. The loss impacts us on every level and makes us feel out of control. And then there’s that other grief, the sustained grief of living every day under the weight of oppressive realities like racism, sexism, homophobia (to name a few).
To grieve is both a conscious and unconscious process; it is our way of getting back the control we feel was lost during the traumatic event. Our methods of grieving are as varied and diverse as we are. Perhaps we meet our loss with sadness, with self-doubt or in the case of sustained trauma, with internalized oppression. We compromise who we are to protect ourselves from further pain and loss.
So how do we create a new normal or at least find moments of reprieve? How do we care for ourselves in the midst of sustained grief? Check out the video below. In creating this powerful piece, the artist does something different; he refuses to allow his grief to define him.
How do you respond in the midst of your reality? In what creative ways are you combatting areas of sustained grief in your life?