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My Grief Never Seems to Go Away… It Just Hangs Around

April 17, 2018 By sgarrett Leave a Comment

“My husband died 2 years ago only 2 weeks after he was diagnosed with a cancer.  Four months later, my dog was diagnosed with cancer and died after 8 months of grueling chemotherapy (today would be exactly a year).

I did not know what to do with all this death. I only knew I had to get through it… so I grieved my husband and was able to let go of him after a year. But I could not let go of my dog… I just could not grieve any more.

So, I tried to move forward and join the living. It kind of worked, but I could feel grief just below the surface in anything I did, so I knew I would eventually have to deal with it.”

Multiple losses and under expressed grief sound and look just like the story above. We can handle a loss perhaps two yet when compound grief comes our way it can feel very much like “I just could not grieve any more.”

So as this person did, we tuck it away just below the surface. We know full well it is still there and we put on a show in order to join with the land of the living; the land of ‘normal’. Sometimes this is a way for a person to recover some strength before stepping back into grief’s expression. Other times it is simply an avoidance of the grief left to complete.

Either way as this individual noticed, our under expressed grief is always there lurking just under the surface. Best find a support group, a grief counselor / therapist, or a church group to help you through. You do need to attend to your grief and you can’t do it alone.

Filed Under: Dying and Death, The Grief Journey

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sgarrett

About sgarrett

Death is one of North America’s biggest taboos. No one wants to talk about it, so we suffer bad deaths. We can die better, come find out how. Start by subscribing via rss or e-mail.

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The mission of We Can Die Better is to generously serve readers with contemporary, accurate, and well researched information regarding the intimate and important process of dying, death and grief and to do so with boldness, compassion, creativity and humor.

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