So my daughter, a student of psychology, went to a grief counseling session and when she told me, I thought to myself, my oyinbo daughter has come ooo. I however understood that she is a product of her training and for her generation it’s a logical thing to do.
I asked her what the experience was like and learnt that it is basically what we see in the movies with the AA(Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings where people come together, introduce themselves if they feel like and talk when they feel like. There is no pressure whatsoever,it’s just a safe place where people are free to express their grief, how the loss of someone dear to them has impacted their lives and their coping methods.
It opened my mind to the fact that our children have little or less inhibitions in expressing themselves emotionally. It also confirmed my position that at some time after a bereavement or loss, people might need some form of counseling to help them sort their thoughts and feelings.
As a people we are wont to be stoic in our bereavement and tend to bury how we really, really feel deep in the recess of our minds. So today I urge us to allow ourselves to grieve for that Miscarriage, the abortion, the still birth, the end of a relationship/marriage or friendship, the death of a loved one.
Grieving is a part of life and we must seek to understand the way we feel about our loss and how our unresolved emotions unconsciously find their way into our everyday life mostly in the negative. We need to understand the different stages of grief, accept them and let them run their legitimate course.
We need to know that it’s alright to go through a season of denial where we refuse to accept the facts that are staring us in the face in the hope that they are lies, a season of anger towards God, towards the deceased for leaving, for not taking proper care of themselves, opting for death, a partner for seemingly abandoning us, their responsibilities and pursuing a life without us, anger towards the perpetrators of death, was as a result of someone else’s action.
A season of despair when our realities are ever present and overwhelming and finally a place of acceptance where we come to terms with what has happened and face the reality of our altered state.
These stages have no logical progression nor time frame. For some, mourning may take weeks, months and years. Some go through all the stages at once, some skip some stages or go forth and back from one stage to another. . . there is no orderliness to grief, it is not cut out and dried.
So as we grieve, there is the need to look inwards, own our feelings and resolve not to let them take control of our lives. In other words, we must become more self aware, ask ourselves why we feel the way we do and get to the bottom of our feelings so we can address them appropriately.
No one grief is alike, circumstances vary , for example, my circumstances -middle aged, two adult children in their last stages of schooling is different from that of a twenty/thirty something year old with 2 or more kids under 10. Our needs, experiences and desires will definitely be different and so will our grief.
Only you can express how you grieve, some cry, some talk, some are quiet, introspective, some party, some drink, some live life recklessly. I sometimes do mine with Barry White on heavy rotation as loud as I can get away with without disturbing my co habitants.
I started going out to social gatherings about 6 weeks after Mr Aisi passed, I couldn’t imagine sitting home for a supposed time of mourning when I knew very well that I would miss him all my life. But that didn’t mean I was not grieving. You see going out especially for an extroverted person has nothing to do with the state of our minds. It’s what we do unconsciously and it is our default mode, a distraction to take our minds off our circumstances.
It’s very comforting to know that after the darkest of night comes the dawn of a new day. Spring and summer come after the harshest of winters and likewise Grief will come, take its toll, run its course and be left behind for the new life that opens up to us in the likeness of new relationships, births and friendships .It’s alright to grieve and there is a time for grief. We will all have different timelines but we must all wake up one day to begin the journey to living life again.
