The holiday season can be a difficult time for those dealing with loss and grief. She Talks Asia spoke to Grief Coach Kevin Si (@kevinusaur) on his experience of losing a partner and how we can deal with feelings of grief this Christmas.
1. Why are feelings of grief and loss more pronounced during the holidays?
Holidays in my perspective echoes strongly about one thing: connection. It can be synonymous to rest, but as someone that has worked with grief, rest can be subjective and can be bent down to negative connotations. To expound on what I mean by connection, I’ll break it down into two aspects: connection with your true self as well as with people you love.
For self, think about the time where you break the cycle of doing routine work or activities and ending up waking up a little later, having more time to brew your own coffee as carefully as you like, as well as savoring your breakfast a little bit more. You put more time for your hobbies such as reading books, watching your favorite Netflix series or just going to the gym to have more of that endorphin hit. You get to be who you are again, as an individual. Not an employee, not an entrepreneur, not a hustler, not a person fragmented with who they have to be. You get to be authentic and ask yourself “What do you want?” And you get to fulfill that in the holidays.
Most of us will get to have a second type of connection which is the love of others. In this technological era where in the 365 days in a year, 261 is meant for work. In the few holidays we get in between, our first instinct would probably be “How can I spend it with the people that matter?” Some introverts that are frugal would spend it in the same room, playing games or reading books. Some, a staycation in the hotel or Airbnb. To the people with a lot of savings, probably travel abroad. In those moments we share whether you’re aware or not, we entrust part of our identity to another. We give a little piece of our life to someone we can cherish it with.
In most cases, your connection with yourself will also include your connection with your loved one. As we nurture our relationship with them, they nurture the relationship they have with us so it’s a mutual exchange. Rarely is there a time that there are people we love, and we’d like to make time for ourselves exclusively unless we end up in a bad place in our lives, and even then, we probably would have another person we’d reach out to.
Experiencing loss, in whichever manner such as through mortality, breakup or a change of season is a severance of that connection we hold dear. It goes full stop on the memories we’ve built, moments we’ve cherished and stories we hold dear. We lose a common practice in reconnecting with a love that nurtures our being. Self-love rarely beats a truly loving relationship that two people can have.
And that is only the one side of the coin, likewise, just as I’ve mentioned in the second paragraph, because of the lack of connection with others, our connection with ourselves gets amplified to the point that we tend to get an impromptu self-reflection of or our inner voice gets louder saying “What do you want?” and the answer repeats over and over again “I want what I used to have” and this cycle tends to lead a downward spiral.
As social creatures, we have a need to be connected with our community and most especially with someone. Our spirit craves not only not to feel alone but for someone to know us truly for who we are. When we lose someone, part of ourselves dies with them, buried like a secret letter that was once read but nevermore.
2. What do you think are simple concrete ways we can handle our feelings of grief better during this time?
There are three things we always encourage to help with grief: Make time for self-reflection, connect with the loss as well as connect with others.
Self-reflection
In the first few months of grief, you must sit down with yourself and experience all the emotions you’re feeling and really make time for it. Grief is commonly defined with strong words such as deep sadness or sorrow and it’s very unhealthy to ignore such time that your most authentic being needs to be felt – which means give yourself space to cry if you need to cry and be angry if you need to be angry. In tandem to this, it’s encouraged to make a journal out of it, nothing formal or templated, all you need is to write what you both think and feel. Both thoughts and emotions can bloat to detrimental proportions that can cause some mental health symptoms if not expunged from your state of being routinely.
Connect with the Loss
A common case of grief is a lot of regrets about unsaid words, most often about forgiveness and faults. One of the recommended healthy practices is to write letters to them as if you’re going to genuinely send it. No need to mince words or be formal as you’ll be keeping those as a living testament to the connection you’ve built. As mentioned in self-reflection, it’s important to be able to place all that’s happening inside you over something tangible whether through words or art. So, find a channel that’s something you can make time for, and that makes you express what you feel. Feel free to be public about your grief as it’s now part of your story. You’d be surprised how many people will reach out and support you in your time of grieving.
Connect with Others
You’ll never recreate what you once had with anyone, but you can always make new ones that bring more light to the new being you’ve become. In moments of grief, you might find that you have the desire to be anonymous and avoid people you most commonly interact with. This is ok and is perfectly normal because you feel like they’d hate listening to you repeatedly and have understood the story with perfect accuracy. Reaching out to strangers and making new friends who don’t know anything about you is a good remedy to mimic that strong sense of interest and desire for your company that you once had with your former being. It doesn’t have to be romantic, just reach out and make new friends through conversations, it doesn’t have to be physical.
3. How can a grief coach or grief counselor help?
Grief coaches are people specifically trained on how to handle such overwhelming emotions. As humans, we have celebrated birth, and love throughout our lives continuously. Unfortunately, we forget or ignore that it is inevitable and part of living to die, as start is to an end. Grief coaches are very aware of that and continue to meditate on such ideas and reality. Most cultures find it taboo to lose someone, and collectively as the surviving we’ve forgotten the opportunity to celebrate the moments and the stories created throughout the life of those that passed away.
Grief coaches are master listeners and see death as part of our journey as the living. Our safe spaces are centered around you and for you to talk about your stories such as: Your favorite memory, greatest regret, an embarrassing moment, or your little secret -- stories that would think should have been buried or you think is too shameful to tell but for us it matters, it is treasured, and our favorite thing to hear. Our methods relieve that congestion of emotions and thought you get throughout grieving while continuously creating new connections to the person you love and understanding your new sense of self.
As someone that has a personal experience with the death of my romantic partner, my whole world shattered, and time stopped. I felt like I lost my identity and purpose, and the future was bleak. Grief is not rational, it’s overwhelming. You don’t respond to it with “God has better plans for you” or “They’re plenty more other fish in the sea.” It’s sensitive and irritable. You can have the most genuine concern and yet if not communicated properly will turn you into a villain. I’ve fought with my family, alienated my friends, and even hurt others because of my inability to think straight. It’s like drowning but every time you lose consciousness, you wake up still under the sea.
I remember the first social holiday after my loss, amid my family being festive with red shirts and great food, I felt this surge of emotions about being alone and I had to lock myself in the CR only to bawl it out. Grief is sensitive to connections because you will be jealous of what others still have and you lost, which is greatly emphasized by such gatherings.
For months I have grieved alone, and it didn’t make it any better. Thankfully my brother recommended a grief coach that helped me understand, make peace, and forgive myself for what has happened. It’s a long and arduous journey and I still get a sting sometimes, but I’ve grown so much better than when it first came by.
Seeing how much I was at a loss and where I am now, I’ve resolved to take the same training to have the same capacity to lift people out from the unbearable weight grief brings. Whether it’s from a breakup or through death, I treat every grief equally: with a listening ear and empathic heart and a keen spirit – the ingredients to a space where everyone feels welcome to tell their unique stories of their love which should be celebrated.
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