The Act of Grieving By: Catherine Gouge

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
― C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed

         Throughout this past year, I have been surrounded by stories of death – a loved one’s tragic car wreck, a friend’s miscarriage, a spiritual mentor’s lost battle with cancer… I, unfortunately, could go on. These sorrows range from the near to the far in my social sphere and their collective weight is heavy. Together, they bring into focus the question of loss and how we navigate the suffering left in its wake.

         Grieving in its verb-tense, can be done either passively or actively. To grieve passively is to essentially hold your grief at arm’s length. Sure, you’re still holding it, but you refuse to bring it close, because doing so is too painful and you’re likely just focusing on taking each next step. This is understandable and okay for a period. However, staying in this place with your grief will not move you further along in the processing of it. Time may separate you from the intensity of the heartbreak most of the time, but this is not an indication to your progression in the acceptance and meaning-making of the loss and over time it becomes harder and harder to maintain the effort required to keep it at a safe distance.

To grieve actively is to bring it close, to hold it at the heart level and willfully experience the sadness and despair. We do this when we remember the person – memories of them, what they meant to you, and of course, the fact that they are gone. The act of intentionally entering this experience is honoring the relationship you had with that person and who they were. To experience grief is a gift in that your current mourning reflects having had a kind of love that to lose would be this dreadful. After all, that is what makes life worth living. To love at all is to be vulnerable, but even now, amid this suffering, you know it was worth it.