Getting Grief Right: Book Review
Hi Reader: This is Wendy. I am so happy to be invited as guest writer to share a few thoughts with you about Grief. My background is Nursing and Medical Social Work. I am also a local chapter contact for PFLAG, a long-standing organization that supports the LGBTQ community. A large part of my amazing hospital career that I sometimes still dream of returning to involved supporting the seriously ill or critically injured. I sat with so very many dying people over the years, learning so much from everyone I would meet. As a dear colleague once said, “Wendy it's raw, deeply intimate, and extremely privileged work”.
Please know this is a further privilege to share a few words here. This is my first contributing article for the wonderful OVCS. I believe strongly in counselling which I sometimes also call consulting. I like to think we all need to *consult* someone at some crossroads or maybe turning point, for simply a more neutral opinion on something important, or maybe for an opportunity to look at things from a new angle. It is also invaluable for understanding better any particular type of suffering that may be going on for us. I would tell patients in the hospital who were nervous, hesitant to share, or simply thinking they needed to manage alone, that most of us usually benefit and perhaps even heal better-- when we attune to our own inner world but in the presence of a good listening, empathic, and understanding other.
I’ve been thinking a fair amount about people and grieving lately. Yes, it's a sad enough subject for sure, but we all lose someone at some point, don’t we. After listening to a dear person who had lost two close family members in the same year or certainly within a short space of time, some of her bravely revealed feelings seemed to linger with me during our very cold February. I found myself searching for a book on the topic that I had purchased earlier but laid aside: *Getting Grief Right by Patrick O’Malley, PHD with* *Tim Madigan*. As is usual for how I find my reading material, I believe it was discussed on good old CBC. So I read it from front to back. I became inspired as I will share here later. I grew bold enough to write the author who actually replied to me quite quickly. I had expressed to him how his words and his empathic, compassionate work with his clients had left a tremendous impact on me.
I won’t keep you in suspense. I am also not talented enough to be offering a book review here. However, with his emailed permission regarding my ability to spread his word I offer these thoughts below. I will jump right in.
The more significant the loss the deeper our heart may have to crack open. I really feel those words describe it best. I know I saw our three daughters experience the cracking open heart when they felt their first loss, their first death... of our beloved dog Mac. I could not make things any better. School was missed and each daughter took her own time and way to work through and into that love relationship they had developed with this four-legged family member.
There is no right or wrong way to do one’s grieving. I believe most of us know this, right? Or have we been influenced by previous theories that explain how there will be stages of suffering or acceptance. Certainly, there are many outside factors that might influence how we should grieve this way or that way.
My message and the one I agree with in this book: Please don’t let anyone tell you that you should be feeling your loss should be over, or be moved to the past by a certain time. One thing I learned in Social Work school is that there are *no shoulds*.
There can be very complicated situations of loss for sure and of course there are multitudes of loss experiences that don’t necessarily involve a death as well. While this book looks much more at loss related to a death we must compassionately remind ourselves that loss from change of any kind can be deeply felt.
The idea of the sort of marrying the sadness we feel to the love we knew (and felt) is so beautifully addressed in this book. (You will just have to read it for yourself. He says it the best of course! ) It is in the very doing of this that we help our hearts to heal and keep the person we had alive -in a new meaningful way. Stories, remembered experiences are just so important he says-- because they are indeed the way to go forward...
We probably have all sat around while wiping tears away, and said, “Oh remember the time that she surprised us with...”. However, this book really delves into the transformative and healing nature that storytelling offers us, especially when we are feeling truly broken-hearted. I think it does this because we are being asked to really take advantage of an opportunity. And that is, to look at the relationship you had with the one you lost and what it meant. What is so beautiful and comforting to me is how doing so has great potential to deepen the connection to the one who has died.
On a personal note, I am devoted to my 102-year-old mother. This book will stay on my night table as a guide for those days in the future where I know heartache sits waiting for me. In the meantime, I will be keeping her laughing at my awful jokes and enjoying every moment on our walks.
I truly don’t wish to write much more here, or to try to give more away about what is in this book. I will say, however, that there are many incredible, truly helpful questions he offers. You can consider what it might be like to use them to ask yourself about your present loss experience or share them forward to someone else that you care about.
I want for you, like with a good film or movie, to discover within what this book might have to offer you. As well, consider it too for how beautifully it asks you to attune to yourself. After all, this is about *you*r own very personal and intimate experience, *your* heart, and *your* feelings. While others care about you, offer their well-intentioned advice, the very best wisdom of all may be to simply stay compassionate with yourself, know the important bit about there being no right or wrong way to grieve, and to drop all the expectations you, me, or society might place regarding normal or correct grieving.
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