Seven Lessons I’ve Learned in My Grief Journey -by Andrea Bear

In the six years between the passing of both my parents,talking to others about grief and now navigating a year after my dad's anniversary, grief has taught me a great number of lessons.  Grief is something we can't avoid and, in many ways, is necessary to embrace the human condition fully. At some point in our lives, we will also experience grief, whether through death, loss of a relationship, or some closing chapter. I hope that in reading these lessons, you may find consolation in your own journey and see how God’s intentionality is really about drawing you to know Him more deeply. Below are a few of the key gems of wisdom I have collected, and I hope you find them transformative as they were for me in discovering them.

1. You Have to Feel It to Heal It

When I lost my mom in 2018 to brain cancer, I felt like a piece of my heart had been taken away. My mom was my best friend, the one I would go to hear affirmations, to feel her constant love and guidance. I took this for granted many times.

When she died, I wanted to carry on with my life and operate the same. I was so used to filling my schedule with activities that I didn’t want to feel. Unfortunately, grief has a way of paralyzing you, making you slow down to accept your current situation. I couldn’t function until I addressed some of the feelings I was going through.  It wasn’t until I stopped many activities and began to process my grief that I started to feel as if I could move forward. I became cautious about how much I got involved, for I saw a pattern. Keeping busy kept me from dealing with my emotions.  In essence, grief can stop you in your tracks until you are forced to face it head-on. But once you begin, yes, your path to healing can begin.

2. Tears of Sorrow  Remove Toxins

During the early stages of my grief, I attended a grief support group, and someone had shared with me the chemical breakdown of grief tears. Scientists have discovered that when a person cries in anguish or sadness, as opposed to tears of elation or happiness, the tears remove certain toxins from the body. Chemicals like cortisol have been known to build up in the body, which halts the body's recovery (fight or flight), and are now removed through the process of tears. God designed our bodies to help us heal physically. Crying is not a sign of weakness but rather a purifying agent that helps us eliminate some of the heaviness chemically, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. Is it no surprise that after a person cries, they feel exhausted? This is because all of those toxins have been washed out and your body creates a sense of relief, almost as if you had just completed a half-marathon (and yes, I know what that feels like).

3. Grief without God is just Indigestion

In my encounters with therapist, grief support groups and those I’ve interviewed about grief, people who do not incorporate God into their grief struggle delay the healing process, as opposed to those who embrace faith. We must not forget that our being is made of body, mind, AND soul. Many secular grief groups only address the body and the mind, leaving a spiritual gap for healing.  Secular groups that address the soul often imitate the Judeo/Christian tradition with pantheistic or new age practices, redirecting their healing away from God.  We are creatures made with a spirit, and only God can heal our hearts. Yes, some grief healing can make progress outside of Catholic/Christian grief groups, but we will never fully feel healed. This is because God holds the keys to our hearts. When we try to navigate healing without Him, we begin to see other problems arise, or our grief becomes difficult to understand. This is also due to rationalizing faith and rationalizing God. Having faith, allows God, to take over and heal our heart in ways we hand’t imagined..and in my opinion, there is a greater comfort knowing that I do not have to navigate this on my own.  If we close that door, than we will always have a piece of us that simply feels like indigestion, or some uncomfortable bodily ailment.

4. Sorrow and Joy Coexist

In my first couple of years of grief, I could not be convinced that joy could exist with sorrow. I looked at the two as separate lines that never crossed. With the help of my Catholic faith, I have come to see that these two are more similar than different. This is because God shows us that when we embrace our grief and allow the sorrow to take its place, much joy can follow. Sorrow is not a punishment, nor is it a state of being (as I used to believe), but sorrow allows the soul to remove or eradicate that which has kept us prisoner. When Jesus carried his cross, he fell three times, but each time he got back up. When he was nailed to the cross, he could not escape. His sorrow was great. But without being crucified, he would never have had the resurrection, and the greatest story on earth could never have been told. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.” (john 3:16)  

Mary, too, could see this sorrow, while great would lead to God’s glory, and much joy would come from it. She could foresee that God’s sorrow allowed for an even greater joy.  Is it no wonder that many of the mysteries of the Rosary combine both sorrow and joy? When Mary loses Jesus in the temple, she is mixed with both sorrow and joy, the sorrow of losing her son, but the consolation of finding him and seeing his divinity among the teachers. When she presents him in the temple to St. Simeon, she is elated at the joy of offering him in the temple, but her soul is pierced with sorrow, from His prophecy that Jesus will be the rise and fall of Israel. Yes sorrow and joy co-exist, and when we embrace both, we have a deeper connection to God that leads us to love and our own resurrection.

5. Our Grief Doesn’t Affect the Dead

In my first couple years of grief, I struggled to think that maybe my mom missed me. I couldn’t attend family gatherings without thinking my mom was missing all of this, that life would simply go on without her.  And then one day, after Father’s Day gathering, I was saddened because my mom was not there to celebrate my dad.  I was sitting on the couch looking at her picture from the table. My youngest who was five at the time, looked at me, looked at my mother’s picture and plainly said words I knew were straight from the Holy Spirit.

“Are you crying about Mimi again?” Well, quit crying, Mimi’s happy, and she wants you to be happy too.”

My daughters words shocked me.  How did she know my mother was happy? Years later when I ask her about that moment she doesn’t remember it.  But God knew I needed to hear this message from a child. In Heaven, our loved ones are elated with joy. There is no suffering or crying, only praise and paradise. They are completely surrounded by the joy and glory of God, which keeps growing and can only get greater, so why would they miss us? If anything they delight for the day we will reunite with them.  If our loved ones have not made it to Heaven and  are in purgatory, our crying does not help them either. Only prayers and offering of masses can do anything to help them

My crying was for me and not my mom. Once I understood this, my daughters message became clear. Crying certainly has a place and it is God’s way of helping us heal in our physical state, but we are not meant to grieve forever, at least in the continual condition of initial grief. What I realized was my grief was about her missing all these moments, but really I was missing out on them too, because I chose to look at each experience without her as a sad moment. Like a book, I was stuck on the previous chapter and didn’t want to turn the page. While my mother’s  Book of Life had ended, my Book of Life hadn’t. I needed to keep living and God still had a plan for me.  Our grief  may not affect the dead, but it does affect the living. We must process and heal, and remember that God still has much for us to use in the time we have here.

6. Mary Knows Grief Better Than Anyone

The first few years after my mom died, I struggled with the Rosary.

I had been told time after time that the Rosary was the most powerful prayer, and I knew there were promises attached to this devotion, if prayed regularly and devoutly, Mary would bring our intentions to her son. So I prayed it daily, but truthfully felt nothing. In fact, I felt worse. I struggled to understand how this was helping, primarily because I could not relate to Mary. She never sinned, she couldn’t empathize  to my original state, she had an obedient child, a compliant husband and parent who didn’t’ challenge her (again things that I struggled with at the time.)

 I looked at Mary snobbishly. How could she understand anything I was going through?  But something inside me told me to continue praying…so I did. After a while, a suggestion was made to try a specific devotion. This was called Our Lady of Sorrows.  I figured, why not, I’m already deep in depression, nothing was working and what would it hurt.  The devotion also promised specific promises so I figured it would help me answer some prayers. As I began to pray this devotion, almost immediately within a few recitations, Mary made it clear to me her sorrow. Each Dolores (sorrow)  began to transform me. I saw my own children in these mysteries, the tears and fears from a mother. And more recently, I saw the tears from a daughter when my father died. Mary understood my pain better than anyone, because she was a mother, a daughter, a wife.  And because of her sinlessness, she suffered even greater than me. I realized Mary was not snobbish, but suffered more than I had. It was here that my healing with my grief truly made the greatest breakthrough. I surrendered myself to her tears (her Dolores).

7. God Wants You to Be Happy

Seven years now after the loss of both parents, I can tell you that God truly wants your happiness. It took some time for me. And yes, I still miss my parents greatly, but I what I have learned is that God needed my attention in all of my sorrow so that I could keep him as my center. And when I began to do this, my life started to change.  He wants you to delight in him and experience joy. Just like my earthly parents, God wants to see you thrive and be the best version of yourself. After all you are his child.  But grief is really about our struggle within ourselves and learning to lean on God and ask for him to be at our center. That was the greatest lesson. To rely fully on God for my sorrow, my joy so that I could feel his love so deeply and glorify him. My prayer is that these lessons will help you in your own journey so that you have that peace within your heart.

God Bless you!