What is Bereavement?
- Susan Hollins
Interchangeable Terms?
Bereavement and grief are terms often used interchangeably when we talk about losing someone or something dear to us.
It’s important to remember that bereavement and grief encompass all manner of losses, apart from the death of someone you love.
Bereavement and grief are not quite the same, as you’ll find out as you read on.
Loss and Bereavement
Do you know that there are over 90 different types of loss? Here are just a few of them:
- Loss of a Partner through death
- Loss of a child through death
- Loss of our job
- Loss of our home
- Loss of our legal right to live in the country of our birth
- Loss of a close friendship
- Loss of a Partner through Divorce or Separation
- Loss of a baby through miscarriage or stillbirth
- Loss of a beloved pet
- Loss of a lover (where we’ve been ‘the other’, that is, not the legal partner)
- Loss of purpose for our life
- Loss of identity
The term bereavement applies to any and all of these experiences if they enter our lives. “How are you today?”, asks a friend. “Oh, you know…I’m really bereft now that I’ve retired and I don’t have my job to go to anymore.”
Bereavement – I’ve Been Robbed!
Bereavement is a state of being following the loss of something or someone dear to us. This word has ancient roots in Anglo-Saxon in the word berēafian. (pronounced beerayaffian). The ancient word ‘rēafian’ (pr. rayaffian) means to rob, to deprive someone of something or of a person important to them.
The old word is very helpful – with its association with being robbed – as we can feel that we have been robbed when someone we love dies, or when we lose something which is crucially important to us.
Bereavement and being bereft are the same thing. We’ve been robbed of someone dear to us, of something of value to us.
Bereavement – An Unexpected Fact of Our Life
Bereavement is a state we enter when we experience a loss of any kind which has a significant impact on us, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, practically.
Bereavement is a state of being: an overwhelming earth-shattering experience which can upheave our lives in every possible way.
Bereavement is a factual thing: my beloved dog died last week and I’m completely bereft without him.
We are bereaved. We are bereft. An unwanted fact of our life stacked with all the other facts of our life.
Loss, Bereavement, Grief – The Dynamic Trio
The loss occurs. We are bereaved. Grief arrives. The dance begins.
Loss, bereavement and grief are like a trio in a wild, dynamic dance. They are both separate from each other and interlinked with each other, like dancers holding hands in a circle. Like dancers holding hands in a circle, they relate to each other. None exists without the other.
Grief is the umbrella term for the multiple emotions, thoughts and upheavals which we can experience when we lose someone we love, or when we lose something we value immensely.
Grief leads the dynamic dance, swirling and twirling us this way and that, up, down, round, round, down, up, left, right…
We have to join the dance. If we don’t join this dance, then we risk being stuck in time, at the point when the great loss occurred.
Bereavement, Grief – The Emotions, The Extra Experiences
Grief comes with multiple emotions. It can also open the door to other unpleasant experiences.
Here are some of the most common emotions and other unpleasant experiences:
- Feeling and being left out of life
- Feeling left behind
- Feeling lost and alone
- Experiencing more emotional turbulence than you could ever imagine
- Feeling puzzled and hurt as friends aren’t able to understand how things are for you now
- Feeling completely exhausted in head and heart most of the time
- Sleeping very badly, spending many hours awake
- Eating very badly, eating comfort foods, eating very little
- Drinking too much
- Taking drugs, perhaps for the first time (anything to escape the agony)
- No longer being invited to social events
- No longer wanting to be as sociable as before
- Losing friends as they drop away from you because they don’t (or can’t) understand you anymore and/or because they can’t bear anything to do with death
- No longer having a purpose for your own life
- No longer knowing who you are
- Getting nowhere in informing the Utility Companies that the bill-payer has died
- Running out of money because your Bank has mistakenly closed the Joint Account.
- Having to sell your home or find another place to rent because you can’t afford the monthly mortgage or rent by yourself.
- Having to take extended sick leave from work as you just can’t cope with its demands.
- Having to justify your sick leave to your boss who doesn’t understand why you can’t return to work the day after your loved one’s Funeral.
- Running out of words for how immensely sorrowful you feel without….
- Feeling suicidal but not planning anything
- Feeling guilty for something you said or did (or both) before your loved one died.
Grief – The Unwanted House-Guest...
Becomes The Permanent Resident
If we don’t join the dynamic trio of loss, bereavement and grief in their wild dance, then we risk being left behind and of getting stuck at the point of the loss.
Painful and challenging as it is to allow allow grief to take up full residence in your life, nevertheless, for you to survive and eventually to thrive once more, it has to be.
As you and grief become better, and more closely acquainted, you’ll discover that grief has its own moods and nuances. As you learn to recognise these and to recognise and understand your own emotional patterns and needs, so life with grief will become easier, will even out.
There will unavoidable storms which will capsize you. You’ll learn to navigate these and how to get back into the boat which carries you over the emotional seas.
There’ll be times when grief will be barely noticeable. There’ll be days when grief thunders around in your inner house like a mad thing, or like a monster threatening to eat you alive.
The trick? To allow these days to take place. Affirm life during the quiet times. Learn how to hunker down, to ride out the inner thunderstorm and to manage the monster threatening to eat you alive. Resistance is useless. It will only make things worse for you and extend the agony, which can dominate the early part of grief.
It’s important to recognise that there’s no fixed time span for grieving. Your breakthrough at the second anniversary may be the time when someone else begins to grieve fully. In any case, as it’s often said, “comparisons are odious” – they get us nowhere.
Help is Available
A Companion, A Guide, A Navigation Assistant
If you’re experiencing most of the emotions, and even some of the unpleasant experiences I’ve set out here, then you’re certainly on the grief road, or trying to sail the Oceans of Emotions.
If you’re feeling at the end of your tether, then I am here to help you.
I’ve loads of different emotional, psychological, spiritual and practical resources which I can share with you. These will help you understand what’s going on, and to manage your grief instead of being regularly overwhelmed by it. Think of it as a tool-kit which you’ll be able to use again and again.
In the privileged healing task of grief therapy (bereavement counselling), I can be your companion on this rough road, helping you find the signposts you need. I’m a skilled navigator of the emotional oceans of grief who’ll teach you what I know so that you can sail them confidently and wisely.
If you’d like to find out more about how I can help you, I offer a free 30-minute Exploratory Session. This can be by phone or video call.
I’ll be here when you’re ready.
