Grief's Terrain
Finding stability amidst the emotional storm of loss
Introduction to April’s Theme
Since the time of early Greek philosophers, there has been a debate about whether we are ruled by our emotions or by our unique ability to use reason.
On one hand, the enlightenment has helped prove just how valuable reason and rationality are. Every advancement we’ve made since is due to our ability to use logic and reasoning to advance civilization.
Emotions on the other hand have historically been viewed as the wild-card, the second-child, the bull in a china shop.
Plato used the metaphor of emotions as two horses with reason represented by a charioteer attempting to wrestle control. More recently, the psychologist
has defined this battle of emotions versus reason through the metaphor of the Elephant and the Rider with the Rider attempting to direct the Elephant—with some success—but ultimately not fully able to control.But while emotions have gotten the negative wrap for over 2,000 years, they are nevertheless the lifeblood of being human. The psychologist Susan David says that emotions are “immediate physical responses to important signals from the outside world,” and Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer describe emotions as “police officers of the mind.”
“They regulate our behavior by telling us, "Go! This is good," or "Stop! This is bad." This policing function has been co-opted by our value systems…”
It is emotions also that, for better or worse, connect us to our fellow citizens. When we go to church, or to a sporting event, there is a shared emotional bond we have with others, what the historian Barbara Rosenwein called “emotional communities.”
Regardless of whether one believes we should be ruled by reason or emotion, the fact is, we have both. Emotions are creatures of magic, they hold the ability to have us feel light as a feather one moment or heavy as an anvil the next.
But in order to make the most of life with our emotions, we need to better understand them, how and why they arise, which are destructive and which are beneficial, and how those emotions can guide us to living a good life.
For the month of April, we explore the theme of emotions and look into some of the most powerful emotions that drive our behaviors today: grief, disgust, anger, and empathy.
This Week at a Glance:
We’ll all experience loss within our lives and with that loss, the emotion of grief. This week we’re exploring what grief is, how and why it comes about, and what we can do to handle its arrival.
By the time you finish this meditation, you’ll learn:
🍭 About the five stages of grief and how that model is not in fact how we experience grief;
🍬 Understand the spontaneity of grief and the chaos of emotions it springs on us;
🍫 How we can find ways to cope with the grief as the waves of emotional distress hit us.
“In those early days and weeks and months, it was always there, not just below the surface but on the surface, simmering, lingering, festering. Then, like a wave, it would rise up and pulse through me, as if it were going to tear my heart right out of my body. In those moments, I felt like I couldn't bear the pain for one more minute, much less one more hour.”
The above comes from Sheryl Sandberg’s memoir, Option B, which detailed the sudden loss of her husband and her subsequent travels through the grieving process that she learned to navigate in the days and years following his passing.
There are few guarantees in life, but loss is at the top. We will all face it at some point—the loss of a friendship, of a time period, of a parent or loved one. Loss runs deep through human nature and is core to the fundamental questions of the human condition.
And all loss brings with it in some form or fashion grief.
In the late 1960s, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross came up with the theory of the five stages of grief:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
The stages represented an easy to understand method for facing the grieving process. Displayed much like a wave with highs (Denial) and lows (Bargaining) before coming up and out the other side (Acceptance), the five stages of grief helped individuals put words and structure to a process that seemed isolating, confusing, and nonlinear. Her book, On Death and Dying, has since sold millions of copies and helped millions of people.
But grief, as many know, is anything but linear. While the five stages of grief occur for almost everyone, they do so differently for each of us.
Paul Kalanithi, the neurosurgeon who detailed his battle with cancer and the decaying process in his book, When Breath Becomes Air, went through the five stages in reverse order:
“It struck me that I had traversed the five stages of grief-the "Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance" cliché—but I had done it all backward. On diagnosis, I'd been prepared for death. I'd even felt good about it. I'd accepted it. I'd been ready. Then I slumped into a depression, as it became clear that I might not be dying so soon after all, which is, of course, good news, but also confusing and strangely enervating.”
As Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg point out in Option B, grief tends to move in an oscillating up and down fashion for each of the emotions, not the five as a whole.
Once one surpasses depression and gets through acceptance, they do not suddenly relinquish depression’s hold. Rather, some days depression is lower and life is more manageable whereas others it isn’t and keeps one from moving.
As Michael Cholbi writes in his book Grief: A Philosophical Guide:
“Many individuals who grieve do not undergo these five particular stages; do not undergo them in this order; or undergo other states as parts of their grief… This thesis should not be misunderstood. That grief is a multistage process does not entail sharp temporal boundaries between the emotional stages that constitute a grief episode.”
When we go through grief, we are thrown off balance. Every day brings with it new trials and tribulations that seek to dislodge us. As Joan Didion articulated in her own struggles to cope with the loss of her husband, “Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be.”
Grief has a mind of its own. It comes on out of the blue, it stays as long as it desires, and it takes whatever shape it wants. Some grief manifests in sadness and loss, the feeling or reminder of the impermanence of our existence. Other times it provides glimpses into the past, to memories and times we may never have thought of. In times like this, nostalgia becomes grief’s partner as our minds search for a time where life was once again stable and normal.
The philosopher Michel de Montaigne astutely captured the trouble with grief when he stated that it is our soul that is captured and burdened by the emotion.
And this is what makes grief so hard to handle—it is wild and unpredictable, its teeth sinking in to the depths of our being, of our existence.
In an effort to combat grief’s hold of us, we must learn to be like a dancer.
When a dancer learns how to spin, the first time they do they get dizzy easily. As a solution to this, they are taught to “spot”—the act of focusing on a single point that they can continuously try and keep their gaze on. With each rotation, their head and eyes snap back to the unmoving focal point in an effort to stabilize the vision and in turn the body.
In handling grief, we need to be like the dancer, we need to find a point of guarantee, something immovable, something that can provide us stability in times of complete chaos and unknown.
A friend or family member
A book or story
A phrase or saying
A memory or experience
Long ago I was given the advice of grounding oneself in the knowledge that tomorrow the sun will rise and with it a new day will dawn. Holding tight to something guaranteed, something that can stabilize us, while it will not make the pain of the loss go away, it will provide us the stability we need in times of recovery.
And sometimes, as we try and figure out our next steps, as we try and regain our equilibrium, having those guarantees is just what we need to get through the day.
“It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed for ever.”
3-Bullet Summary:
The five stages of grief occur within the majority of us but the emotions do not hold boundaries, the emotions often come and go as they please for as long as they please;
Grief has a mind of its own and will come on as rapidly or slowly as it desires, and can often take the form of memories and the experience of nostalgia as a way of reminding us of times without the pain;
We can attempt to manage the grieving process by way of “spotting”—finding something reliable in life that you can continually bring your focus back to as the waves of emotion crash over.
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Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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