Why grief is important

It might be the loss of a loved one, relationship, pregnancy, pet, job or way of life. Other experiences of loss may be due to children leaving home, infertility and separation from friends and family. The more significant the loss, the more intense the grief is likely to be. Grief is expressed in many ways and it can affect every part of your life; your emotions, thoughts and behaviour, beliefs, physical health, your sense of self and identity, and your relationships with others.

Grief can leave you feeling sad, angry, anxious, shocked, regretful, relieved, overwhelmed, isolated, irritable or numb. Grief has no set pattern. Everyone experiences grief differently. Some people may grieve for weeks and months, while others may describe their grief lasting for years. Through the process of grief, however, you begin to create new experiences and habits that work around your loss. Download the grief and loss factsheet.

Grief is something that takes time to work through. While everyone finds their own way to grieve it's important to have the support of friends and family or someone else, and to talk about your loss when you need to. Many people do not know what to say or do when trying to comfort someone who is grieving.

However, often it is the simple offer of love and support that is the most important. The therapeutic purpose of grief and mourning is to get you to the place where you can live with the loss in a healthy way. To do this, you have to make some necessary changes in your life, including:.

Changing your relationship with your loved one—recognizing he or she is now gone and developing new ways of relating to him or her. Take comfort in knowing your relationship will continue - it will just be different. Developing a new sense of yourself to reflect the many changes that occurred when you lost your loved one.

Taking on physically and mentally healthy new ways of being in the world without your loved one. Finding new people, objects or pursuits in which to put the emotional investment that you once placed in your relationship with the deceased. The bottom line of this active work of grief and mourning is to help you recognize that your loved one is gone.

Then you must make the necessary internal, psychological changes, as well as the necessary external, social changes, to accommodate this reality. And it all takes time. The 5 Stages of Grief. Everyone is unique, and we each grieve and mourn a loss in our own special ways.

While some might put on a brave face, others are completely overwhelmed. Universally however, there are five stages of grief that everyone experiences. If you have recently loss someone, please accept our sincerest condolences and know that we are here for you. The five stages of grief can apply to a variety of circumstances including the loss of a close relationship, the death of a valued being person or animal or in response to a terminal illness diagnoses.

Each individual is different and may not necessarily experience the 5 stages in the order listed below. To go through the grieving process, you do not need to follow step by step.

Rather, you must use them as a guide to help you move forward. An important piece to remember regardless of what stage you are in is; As long as there is life, there is hope.

He is a former management consultant who has worked in a diverse group of industries—ranging from social entrepreneur ship to innovative financial modelling to sustainable development. To understand both sides of the proverbial financial coin, he worked in India within the private sector as a financial consultant as well as in public sector administration. With an MBA in financial management, he worked for a few corporations but soon realized that helping rich people get richer was not his calling.

In his spare time, he enjoys watching and playing football, reading creative non-fiction, and recently, writing on socio-political issues to translate international development jargon and updates for public consumption. This March it would be 10 years since my mother passed away. The death of a parent is among the most difficult and universal human experiences.

Most people will, sadly, experience the loss of parents. The pain endured is harrowing and changes children psychologically. Childhood grief is tenacious and frequent. Which makes unwelcome appearances at milestones like graduations and weddings. Human beings process grief deeply and intricately. No one ever gets over the loss of their parents.

People get through it, yes, and perhaps used to it, but no one gets over it. A piece of your life gets removed and however much you arrange the other pieces; they will never fit in the same way. For me, that makes complete sense that everything changes; if we accept that, in some profound way, our parents help shape who we are, then undoubtedly their deaths will affect us deeply too. The death of a parent perpetually changes us — psychologically, physically, and emotionally — for the rest of our lives.

We always think we will have more time, but we never have enough. There is no quick fix here. The effects of early parent loss reverberate throughout a lifetime. Imagine a huge hole in the middle of your core you carry with you every day, and nobody except you can understand or see it. The hole is as real and tangible as any other thing in your life. It gets a little easier as time goes away, but it never truly goes, it just gets easier to deal with time.

The process of grief varies from person to person, but certain emotions and circumstances that many of us experience. The successes, the weddings and the thought of having your kids who will never know their grandmother. However, grieving is important because it honors the loved one and the relationship between them.