Complex Grief
It is truly tragic what is happening for the young teen that went into the hospital for a tonsillectomy and then due to a heart attack, was later pronounced “brain dead”. Her family has refused to accept this and recently took her out of the hospital, after the family had to fill out an application for a death certificate.
At the time of this writing, it is unknown where the young girl will be taken but the point of this article is to address the grief. Grief is the huge mass of emotion emotions that result from any kind of loss. The bigger the loss, the bigger this mass of emotions will be.
The loss of a child is, obviously, one of the biggest losses that we humans will experience. In the case of this young teen, other factors that increase the intensity of this loss and therefore the size of this mass of emotions are huge. For example, the child’s age, the tragedy of the circumstances that caused her death, the fact that it was played out in the media and so much more increase the depth of pain that this family is feeling.
Grief is the most mis-understood issue that we humans will ever deal with. People are more likely to talk about death than grief.
And, when a huge tragedy causes the acute grief, all other unhealed or undealt with losses will also cause the tragedy to feel even larger than it is.
Our society does not know how to deal with loss. Our society teaches us to put loss, both big and small, in to the “shadow” of our consciousness. The Shadow is like an inner closet where we put issues, losses, trauma, and woundedness that we don’t know how to deal with because our society teaches us that issues and trauma that bring up a lot of feelings are impossible to deal with.
There is a way, however, to deal with these issues.
First, if I had a Magic wand, I would buy the book, THE GRIEF RECEOVERY HANDBOOK by John James and Russell Friedman. These 2 authors have written a book that enables people to heal the loss and grief. When someone is willing to deal with their losses, trauma, woundedness, etc, they become stronger and are able to reach out into their lives in ways that they would never have done before. Plus, they get in touch with dreams that were put on the “back burner”, because the massive grief covered over the belief that these dreams were possible.
The next thing I would do, if I had a magic wand would be to invite all courageous souls who are willing to look at and heal their losses, to my weekend workshop that teaches people how to use the tools from the Grief Recovery Program.
I have a weekend program coming up in February and the dates are listed on my website under programs. Web site it
I do hope everyone who reads this will buy The Grief Recovery Handbook and will also buy 1 to 10 copies for family and friends who are also stuck in grief.