How to Move Beyond Grief: Trauma Therapy in Edmonton
Hi there. I’m Dr. Kelly Clarke. I wanted to talk today about grief. Very hard subject. The reality is that not one of us in this life is going to get away without feeling grief at some time. I remember when I was young, you know, and we went through that phase of everybody getting married. And so young people hopefully do not experience this grief as much as we’re aging like myself. And we start experiencing death and loss and these kinds of things. Of course, grief can be experienced in numerous ways including divorce, even moving locations, even having a different quality of life, loss of a job. So grief and loss occur on many things, but I’m going to talk a little bit more on the probably the stronger impact of grief relative to most of us, although of course losing a job and moving can be even considered a grief and a loss. But I’m going to talk about the loss of someone that we love.
Personal Experience with Loss
This is personally relevant because I’ve had losses before and you know I think the first time I remember really losing somebody deeply that I cared about and of course there’s lots of people that have experienced far younger losses when they were younger. But my first significant one was when I was 19 and you know a young, strong, healthy, popular male friend of mine you know everybody liked this guy was killed on a motorcycle 19 years old and it just set our community into turmoil. It was such a hard time and I remember be that being you know first of all it was shocking because you know as a young person I didn’t expect that somebody would pass away in my life at that age and and I think that’s part of grief is it’s shocking but I wanted to talk a little bit about grief and loss because I know every one of us are going to experience it. It’s the most reliable statistic in the world. 50 you know 100% of people pass away. One out of one of us dies. So, we are all going to experience loss through death at some point in our life. I know it’s a hard conversation, but I wanted to bring it up.
I personally had the loss of my sister about 6 months ago and am still going through intense grief and I think it’s an important thing to talk about because a lot of us are experiencing that. I was reminded of when my sister passed and just completely was lost for several months. I was reminded that probably a lot of you may know this. I remember hearing a song, a hymn from Horatio Spafford through the years called It is well with my soul. I’m not sure if any of you have heard this. Horatio Spafford. This is what he wrote. He penned this hymn back in the early 1800s. Basically he was a successful lawyer who had bought property. He had five children. His youngest was a 4-year-old boy and he lost this boy to scarlet fever. And so in profound grief, he and his wife and the four daughters remaining were planning a trip to Europe. And so as he had some business to tie up, oh by the way, he also lost many of his properties in the Chicago fires. So he had that on top of losing his young son planning a trip to Europe to coalesce and to you know to grieve and to help deal with some of the pain. So he had been tied up and had stayed back in America and sent his wife and four girls across to Europe to meet him, you know, in the future. He was going to meet them.
At any rate, while they were traveling on route, the boat hit another boat and his wife survived and she actually said she sent him a message saying survived alone and the four daughters were all lost at that time. I mean, as I’m saying it, I mean, any father is going to be so sad just hearing this. It’s a profound loss to lose your kids that way. And he had one also, you know, lost before his son, his only son. And the story goes that he wrote this powerful hymn within a week of writing that or rather of experiencing that tragic loss. And so I mean it’s a powerful testimony to this individual’s faith that he was able to you know trust in in God or a higher power at a time he was going through profound profound grief and even though as I look at and I remember the words and some of you may know the words but essentially it talks about his trust that that God will help him through that time and that it is well with his soul because he can trust that you know the creator of the universe can help him and his family through this time and although I believe that profound faith and trust that he would have what’s clear to me what it was not well with was his heart there is no way that that man felt content in his heart after that great loss the story doesn’t end there I read you know through the internet just some sources and so what what happens is that he moved to Jerusalem in the future. Him and his wife carried on with their ministry and he experienced another family loss later on and eventually he himself died at 58. So not old at all. And the person that I can’t help but think of and of course I know of no time that he rewrote or had another hymn that he wrote. He could have but I didn’t see any evidence of that. But I really feel for his wife as well. She’s the only, you know, only survivor of this large once large family and has to carry on. She’s now, you know, by herself. She lived another approximately 30 years doing ministry in Jerusalem. And so I’m just amazed at these people that they could do this. Now, what a story. But what I wanted to highlight is that even though there is that profound hymn that he wrote, there’s no question to me that he had to go through and she did amazing emotional turmoil through that time in their life.
Understanding the Grief Cycle
And as well as myself, I can relate that and probably many of you if you’re listening to this right now can relate to profound grief, especially when you lose somebody that you love during a deep deep connection with. You may know some of the grief cycle. So there’s research about what we go through as far as grief and there’s several stages and they’re not invariant meaning that they go through you go through this always the same way but the grief stages are this. So the first stage is denial. The next one is anger. Following that bargaining after that depression and then eventually acceptance. You may have heard of this, the grief loss cycle.
Interestingly, and as I went through this with the loss of my sister, that profound shock, you know, denial that myself and my parents went through it. It’s staggering how every day I remember feeling like this can’t be real. This is not something that can be true. She should be just coming through this door. A lot of you having gone through grief will probably have felt that experience just this kind of thing doesn’t feel real. This isn’t right. It can’t be real. She’s so young. Some of the things that I was saying to myself and and there’s this denial and I think psychologically it’s so amazing the body and psychologically what we do. I think that’s a profound powerful tool that our body uses to help us embrace eventually the sad reality of what’s happened. So I think you know we are in this shocked state of absolute confusion in our life that there’s this denial. I can’t believe it. This is not happening. And so I think it prepares us emotionally and psychologically for the next things that we go through.
But then the next phase and probably a lot of you if you’ve had a profound loss can relate to anger. How could this actually happen? How unfair is this? You know, if this is not right. She’s such a good person. You know, in my case, which she was? There’s far worse people in the world, you know, why didn’t this happen to them? This anger, you know, that takes over and that you feel at the shocking reality of what’s happened. The next stage would be bargaining. Ah, if only I would have, you know, known in my sister’s case it was cancer. If only I would have known earlier and if we flew her down to the United States or some other place to get some care. probably any of you that have lost somebody remember going through this bargaining and you know almost some people pleading to God you know if you would have been there this or or maybe you were but there’s this bargaining that happens as we’re still trying to manage the shocking reality of this this experience and then depression of course when the sad reality really starts to sink home and we are realizing that you know, summer comes along and maybe you’re not going to experience those things, there’s profound sadness and depression.
Moving Toward Acceptance and Healing
And so all of us will go through those stages as well, you know, when we go through the sadness of realizing that that person’s not coming back. So, I just wanted to reach out and you know cuz I know there’s many people of course you know people are dying every second of every day and expect this to happen to you. You will go through these stages and eventually that stage of acceptance where we move into more regular living. You know before that life is hard and the colors are less in your life and once we move to the acceptance it’s starting to regular life is starting to happen more appreciating the things a bit more I I remember my wife telling me who lost her dad when she was 29 to cancer she she told me as far as the depression that about 9 months in she it really hit her that he is not coming back. But then eventually moved to the acceptance stage and she would tell me that, you know, we remembered more of those amazing stories about her dad being there and celebrated those memories when he was such a good dad to her. So yeah, and that’s where we eventually get to and need to be.
Sometimes we get stuck and it’s hard for us to get out of those feelings. And in those cases when you really get stuck, I would highly encourage you to consider some counseling, some therapy. Of course, it’s fantastic to talk to family and loved ones. The person that does not talk, you know, of course it’s so profoundly hard to share, but I think it’s healthy, you know, to get to that point eventually where, you know, you’re sharing stories and bringing their name up and grieving. That’s what we need to do. If we avoid it, we won’t properly grieve. So, I really wanted to encourage you to properly go through those stages, allow them, embrace them, encourage them because that will help you far better than if you avoid and don’t talk and sulk and stay in a depressive state. If you are and if you’re landing and getting stuck in one of these places, please reach out to somebody, either a friend, family member, or seek professional help through a psychologist or a counselor. We are, of course, open and receptive. If you have that need, feel free to visit at drkellyclarke.com and we will join in that journey for you to go through the grief process in a healthy manner.