Grief: Relationship grief, or through death, or through any kind

I am going to start this article by quoting an article in the Sunday Observer titled “The language of loss”. It quotes from Nick Cave upon the death of his son, and its explicit clarity.

‘Grief was pounding through my body with an audible roar, and despair was bursting through the tips of my fingers’. How totally apposite. Grief is savage.

Seen mostly as an emotional state, which of course it is, it is also very physical. It really can be. It was for me. l felt like l had been punched in my stomach for a long, long time. The ache always there, sore even to touch. And l didn’t want to be touched because it felt like anyone or anything had no idea how utterly internally palpable and desperate it was. despair. It was out of external reach, because it had altered me. Ripped away something incomprehensible and fundamental in not so much of a flash.

The journey from grief

Part of the journey back from the savagery of loss and its alternation is becoming re-acquainted with your altered self. However, during the bit between, its impact and your resurfacing you are under your own emotional waters.

In this soundless drifting destabilised state where all colour seems paled, you are utterly alone. Here is what to do and what helps what brings you back to the surface. Here are some key words to recognise that you are in that below the surface colourless space.

The feelings

Isolation: Everything that goes with it.

Hopelessness: Mostly ‘eternity thinking’. ie. it is always going to be like this. it isn’t.

Finding it hard to share the truth: If it’s a while after the loss whatever the loss is and you are still feeling emotionally wrecked you can feel shame sharing with others.

Shame: This can often be part of the hiding and isolation you feel as the world seems to be happy and turning and you can feel massively on the outside of that world. l know l did. l couldn’t bear to see others' happiness or hear their laughter it was something that felt so torn from ever being part of again and provokes. Why me?

Difficulty in concentrating: Or reading or watching films and it all feels too much to absorb when there is no room in your head. 

Worn out: Fatigued during the day more easily than before and yet not being able to fall asleep at night. 

Hypersensitivity: To others hardship, really being tuned into it like you can see it in the faces and feel it in the energy of the elderly and others in the street suddenly those in difficultly seem everywhere you go or in commercials of the suffering. they feel unbearable as if that is all there is.

Loneliness: It permeates your whole being in loss.

Let me be clear here also that navigation of loss can be and is about many different kinds of losses and the personal relevance of the loss to you in your life.

Types of grief and loss

• empty nest syndrome 
• change of country for another 
• leaving a country
• divorce 
• death
• end of a romantic relationship 
• end of a friendship 
• family rejection 
• ill health 
• surgery
• hysterectomy 
• lack of belonging through bullying 
• bullying most especially through school or neighbours where you live
• dismissal 
• job loss 

Grief is about loss of any kind that is significant to you. 

What you need to do

Talk to someone who you don’t have to shield from how bad it is feeling for you.

Eat a diet with high protein it absolutely works! It did for me within a week substantially lower the despair in your body and important levels such as sugar really once addressed back up your recovery 

Self care. Yes, that old chestnut. Checking what you are eating, how much sleep you are getting and allowing this grief to unravel is so important doing something nice every day for yourself sounds kind of boring but, when you add up the benefits they do really help okay and are a true part of the journey back home.

How do we survive this? Some write, some create. Some move home, or area, or country.

We learn that loss is both part of life and of love. Coming to terms is both as different and unique for everyone as is the relationship with who or with what you have lost.

Each of us have a different alchemy and because as Cave, says for all our vulnerability we keep on loving, taking risks with our hearts. this is our shared predicament 

We need others kindness their thoughts their deeds however small we need the simple extraordinary glory of nature. they are the treasures that line the road home. both to ourselves and to hope and to the colour of new life.