November 13, 2024 • 37 mins
This podcast episode delves into the complex nature of grief, emphasizing the distinction between viewing grief as a series of stages versus experiencing it as a series of seasons. Dr. Ray Mitsch reflects on the emotional turmoil and experiences that arise during the grieving process, particularly highlighting the "spring of our grief" where feelings of sadness, anger, and denial can resurface unexpectedly. He shares personal anecdotes and insights, illustrating how societal expectations can complicate our understanding of grief, often leading us to idealize the deceased rather than confront the reality of our loss. Through thoughtful exploration, he encourages listeners to engage actively with their grief rather than passively waiting for healing to occur. By embracing the seasons of grief, individuals can better navigate their emotions and find a path toward healing and acceptance.
Takeaways:
- Grieving is a complex process that involves navigating different seasons rather than fixed stages.
- We often seek control over grief through stages, but seasons reflect a more accurate experience.
- Emotions during grief can be unpredictable, resembling the changing weather in spring.
- The concept of grief work emphasizes active engagement in processing emotions and experiences.
- Cultural expectations can distort our understanding of grief, leading to unrealistic ideals.
- Communication about loss should embrace both the positive and negative aspects of the deceased.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:22):
Well, welcome everybody, toanother edition of the unscripted
podcast, the Collected Wisdomof Life, Living and Sorrow.
And as the name implies, itreally doesn't have a script.
I come into these with certainthemes and other things that are
pressed into my awareness byGod and by inner relationships with
(00:47):
people and things that I notice.
And that's why I'm sittingdown and just sharing those with
you.
So thanks so much for takingsome time out of your schedule to
sit down and reflect with meabout life and living and ultimately
the subtext of our lives,which I think is really going to
be there as long as we're human.
(01:09):
And I don't know at what pointwe won't be, but is just sorrow and
loss and the nature of that.
And this week has been aheavy, heavy, heavy reminder of that.
In my experience, it seemslike you can't get out of a month
without hearing or knowingsomeone or some family that has been
(01:35):
affected by loss in one way or another.
And that's certainly been thecase for me this week.
I attend a group of men and wehad a young guy, at least in my estimation,
and we won't get into my ageto compare, but he contracted an
(01:58):
illness that once you'vecontracted it, you don't get rid
of it.
And it eventually took hislife and he died.
And so the biggest challenge Ithink we face is something that Paul
talks about in Thessalonianswhen he talks about us particularly
grieving people that we knowhave trusted Jesus.
(02:22):
How do we grieve, but grievewith hope?
And in a lot of cases, we endup using the hope against our grief
rather than allowing our griefto exist.
And that really is a part ofwhat some of what I want to talk
about tonight in looking atand thinking about what I call the
(02:44):
spring of our grief.
If you're interested and wantto know more about it, check out
my book on thebookstore@sgi-net.org and you can
go to the store and you willfind it there for purchase.
And it's entitled the Seasonsof Our Grief.
And one of the biggestchallenges I think we face, and I
(03:06):
just noticed it even this weekbecause we had an election and half
of the people were unsatisfiedwith the outcome.
And it seems like it is burnedinto the cultural consciousness to
think of our grief in terms ofstages rather than in terms of seasons.
(03:29):
And I think I've been puzzlingover this lately about why does that
hang on so tightly?
Why do we hang on so tightlyto the idea of stages And I think
part of it, the onlyconclusion I've come to, even over
the years, because I haveforwarded the idea of there being
(03:53):
seasons of grief rather thanstages of grief, is that we like
to maintain a sense of controlover the uncontrollable.
And the way to do that is toidentify the stage that we're in.
And that way we can find somevalidity around it or something a
(04:17):
little bit like that.
And that's.
I think, that the teachingvalue, the opportunity for learning
that exists in sorrow is awillingness to lean into our helplessness
and our inability to handle things.
(04:39):
And ultimately, when we get tothat, then the question is, well,
then what do I do?
And what that means then is ifI'm going to confront my vulnerability,
my helplessness, and not inall things, but certainly around
death, that's for sure.
Then I am called either tocontrol more things in order to make
(05:02):
sure I don't feel the pain ofthe sorrow, or I have to choose to
trust someone bigger than mewho has a clear idea of what is going
on and how we might actuallyhave a God that is invested in redeeming
(05:24):
the universe in such a way sothat at some point we can actually
live without sorrow ever.
And that's a.
It seems like a pipe dream, Ithink, to a lot of people that that's
simply impossible.
And then I gotta go back totrust again, because I'm trusting
someone's word, if you will,about that.
(05:45):
And I think generally we don'treally like that much.
And so one of the things thatI have been thinking about, because
I had.
We've had a lot of snow herein Colorado.
It's an early season Novembersnow that's usually really, really
(06:07):
wet.
And I was supposed to speaklast Thursday at Focus on the Family
about the seasons of our grief.
And I had talked a little bitabout the nature of grief and how
we got to where we are and thethings that really go into that.
(06:29):
And the way that we thinkthrough some of these things ends
up being either stages orphases or something similar to that.
That is very much a part ofthe landscape in what we're talking
(06:50):
about here and what I want totalk about here.
But I think some of it is thatwe judge the stages as more understandable
than describing it in reallyany other way.
And even when we talk aboutdevelopment, usually we're most comfortable
(07:11):
in talking about stages.
So it's a stage they're goingthrough when we're talking about
kids or something like that.
And there are other ways toThink about grief development, physical,
emotional, psychological.
All of those developments, ifyou will, are put into.
(07:36):
Which is the most popular oneis Erickson's stages.
And there are eight stagesthat people go through from birth
to death.
And they make sense of things,but there is not bright lines on
the edges of those stages.
You don't just cross over intoone, and now we're there.
And the same thing with movingon to the next one, although I think
(07:58):
we find some kind of comfortin knowing where we are in stages
allows us to do that.
So I think ultimately, in alot of cases, it's just easier to
talk about stages than it isto talk about our experience with
grief, rather than how we canpredict it and explain it and understand
(08:20):
where we are now.
We can still do that withseasons, but it's not nearly as bright
and it's not nearly as cut and dried.
And I think we find somemeasure of safety in the certainty
of the stages that we do.
And so one of the biggestproblems we have in dealing with
(08:44):
grief is that when we usewords like stages or phases or things
like that, it tends to imply acertain level of passivity, like,
I'm just waiting for me topass through it, and I'll pass through
it.
I just need to hang on andsurvive and do the best I can with
what I've got, and then.
And then I'll be done right.
(09:05):
And the whole idea of stagesare very similar to that.
It seems like it's more of anidentification structure or a way
to identify things rather thanan actual experience.
And I've had that told to meover and over again.
I have experienced it myself.
(09:27):
It's not nearly as cut anddried as that.
I can exist in two stages atthe same time.
And most people will hearkenback to Kubler Ross's stages.
And the one thing that I wouldremind everybody who's listening
is Elizabeth Kubler.
Ross wrote her book aboutdeath and dying, not about grief
(09:50):
and grieving.
And in a lot of ways, she had made.
She's made comments beforeabout she never really intended the
stages to be used in talkingabout grief, because it's a different
thing.
It's an entirely different thing.
And so it goes into a lot moreof our need for certainty and predictability
(10:15):
and explanation and ultimatelycontrol that the stages are really
all about.
And because of that, then eventhe conversation with a loss in the
arena of politics, people weretalking about what stages they were
in.
And it's like, it's not really stages.
Let's just talk about where weare, instead of saying what stage
(10:38):
I'm in or what I'm not, andhow do I describe the landscape as
I experience it right now?
And so, like I said, I thinkit's easier to talk about stages.
I think it's better and evenmore accurate to talk about seasons.
And here in Colorado, anddepending on where you're at, as
(10:59):
you're listening to thispodcast, is that you may be in a
different season.
In most of North America, itis the fall.
And fall means differentthings for different parts of our
country.
Obviously the Southwest, it'sgoing to be maybe a little cooler,
maybe.
(11:19):
And in the north, it meanssnow and cold, temps and all the
things that go with that.
So it means different things.
It's not nearly as clean cut,I think, as the stages tend to have
us believe.
And the worst part about that,just to add to that point, the worst
(11:41):
part about that is that one,it makes it sound like it should
be predictable.
And two, once I'm through it,I'm done.
I don't have to do it again.
And that's just fundamentallynot true.
It does not comport at allwith the reality of people's experiences
of going through grief.
So I think it's better tothink in terms of the seasons because
(12:06):
ultimately, in a lot of ways,we're trying to describe the indescribable.
And what we end up bypassingis being present with the indescribable,
the things that we don't like,if you will.
And that really is asignificant part.
What I prefer to do is to talkabout grief and the things that we
(12:29):
experience in grief and sorrowin more in the sense of seasons that
we experience and certainthings that we need to engage in,
we need to do something with.
And one writer in particularcalls it tasks.
And even when we think aboutthe physical world of development,
(12:50):
we talk about tasks there as well.
And that certainly is the casehere with what I want to talk about
tonight.
When we're looking at theseason of our grief and I reflect
on it based on my own season,because at the front end, generally
(13:11):
the grieving process startswith winter.
Everything's dead.
I am numb.
I can get things done.
I can do a lot of things.
I mean, I.
And the funny thing about itis that's usually during the time
when we're actually doing thememorial services and the celebrations
of life and the wake and allthe other words that are kind of
(13:34):
rooted in culture or anyparticular culture in some respects.
Where I grew up in theNorthwest, in Indiana, And Illinois
area, there were funeral homes.
So you went to a home to visitsomebody who was dead.
So it's just a weird, strangewarp of language.
(13:58):
And our language tends tobetray how badly we want to try to
do what I would call Gilda Lily.
In other words, I want to makeit look better than it is.
Because if I can make it lookbetter, I can twist reality into
my own liking rather than livein the reality as I have it.
And so when we hit the spring,everything wakes up just like in
(14:22):
spring.
Winter can intrude in spring,just like summer can intrude in spring.
And it's during the springthat we are fighting between reality
and the reality we wish itwould be.
And in some respects we end upfabricating a reality that suits
(14:44):
our efforts to not feel whathas actually happened.
And as I said over this lastweek or so, what I have experienced
is I had a.
And I would call, I don't knowif I call it devastating, but it
was a significant loss that Ihad last March.
(15:04):
And this only kind oftriggered a lot of those emotions
that I believe if I were doingmy own self diagnosis, which is not
wise to do because I've got avested interest in terms of how this
is going to look and feel andeverything else.
But I would say that I'm inthe spring of my grief.
(15:27):
And so what has happened thenis that the emotions will wake up
and then they will go dormant.
It doesn't mean they don't youstop feeling anything, but it does
mean that we end up feeling.
We have these rises and falls.
So you can have spring dayswhere it feels like summer, and then
(15:50):
you can have spring days, itfeels like winter and, and everything
in between.
And ultimately everything iswaking up.
And so is my.
And our emotional apparatus,if you will, all the feelings start
showing up.
And generally this is whenpeople have the most work to do,
(16:11):
if you will, around handlingand engaging with the loss that they
experience.
And so the temptation is forwhat would otherwise be labeled as
denial is so much more thanthat because we can minimize the
significance of the loss.
(16:32):
We can minimize the importanceof the person.
I can engage in a certainlevel of spiritualism, like people
becoming angels kind of idea.
And even in the Christianrealm we have that and we have that
kind of language.
And some of it is really justto try to take the sting out of what
(16:54):
has actually happened.
So all of our dreams of whatwe wished it could have been are
now made possible by willinglisteners who don't know the history.
They don't know where they'vecome from.
They don't know enough of thehistory to question whether or not
what we're talking about istrue or not.
And so we can add and subtractin terms of the history that we have.
(17:18):
And so we end up beingbombarded by all the emotions that
would otherwise have beendenied somewhere.
And these start coming at usfast and furious during this springtime
of our grief.
And this is usually the timewhen we end up distorting things
and diluting, making them lesspowerful or even magnifying them
(17:42):
and being overwhelmed by them.
All of that is very much apart of the landscape of this springtime
of our grief and how weexperience it and what it actually
looks like.
So the other layer I think wehave to contend with is a cultural
layer.
And my wife and I just wastalking about she went to a celebration
(18:07):
of life service.
And a lot of people have somereally strange ideas about grief.
And they can make it as if itreally didn't happen or it wasn't
that big of a deal.
Now, one thing that I think isinstructive from Elizabeth Kubler
Ross is she makes mention ofthe fact that anticipatory grief
(18:33):
is something very differentthan grief itself.
We experience it differently,we see it differently, we experience
different emotions even duringthat time.
And when the person finallydies, something else hits us, then
it's not quite the same.
So a lot of times people thinkof grief as something that they can
(18:55):
do on credit.
And if I do it now, then Iwon't have to do it later.
And that's not entirely true, really.
And one of the things that isso embedded in our culture is that,
and I think a lot of peoplejust feel it viscerally and they
don't know is speaking ill ofthe dead is that they can't defend
(19:21):
themselves.
So what am I doing?
Why would I do that?
And the reality is people arereally, really pretty complicated.
And when somebody dies, whatwe choose to reminisce about or talk
about or reflect on oftentimesbecause of that very thing of you
(19:43):
don't speak ill of the deadbecause something is going to happen.
What you end up finding isthat the person sounds as if they
should be inducted into the sainthood.
In the Catholic Church, whenthey were complicated people, they
had their own fair share of brokenness.
And that brokenness eithercould refine them into becoming deeper
(20:09):
and deeper people, or it couldimpact them to becoming bitter people
or cynical people or overlyoptimistic people that can't see
the negative of anything.
Because they're afraid that ifthey do, they will just get sucked
into this vortex of negativity.
(20:32):
And all of those things are aproblem because we're not living
in reality as it is.
Instead, we're trying tocreate a reality as we would have
it be.
And the challenge, I think, isthat when somebody dies or we lose
(20:54):
somebody, are we going to talkabout it in a realistic fashion,
or are we going to talk aboutit in an idealistic fashion and thereby
only feed more and more fuelinto the denial of what I am actually
experiencing.
And I can go down that route,but it ends up aborting a lot of
(21:17):
the effort and a lot of thework that I have to do in my grief
process and how it actuallyfeels and the nature of what that
is.
So whatever it is, there is adistinct effort on the people involved
that are left behind to keepintact whatever the idealistic notion
(21:42):
is rather than the realistic notion.
Now, let me give you anexample, even from my own life.
My dad passed away.
My dad died when I was 12.
He was a not a Vietnam.
He was a great war vet.
He was a World War II vet.
He had fought some stints inGuadalcanal in the South Pacific.
(22:04):
He was a Marine, and also somestints on Iwo Jima, one of the most
deadliest battles in the South Pacific.
And I believe, looking back asa kid, that.
That he probably had somepretty significant PTSD after all
that he saw with his service.
(22:28):
And after he died, my mom didthings like mummifying his remains.
Not his remains meaning body.
He was buried bodily.
But there was a closet in ourhouse that was a cedar closet.
It was lined in cedar, whichwould allow the clothes to stay intact
(22:50):
and not get moth eaten oranything like that.
Usually the clothes that cameout smell pretty good on top of it
all.
And me as a kid would oftenlike to.
When I was a little kid, I'dlove to hide in a closet.
And it was in that closet thatshe kept his dress blues from the
(23:12):
Marine Corps and then also hisregular uniform.
And it was usually a drabgreen kind of color.
And I still vividly remember that.
And that stayed that way for along, long, long time until she had
a fire in the house and ittook out that whole thing.
(23:34):
And otherwise it probablywould have still been there by the
time we ended up liquidatingthe estate and selling off the house.
And that's kind of a way todeny the reality of what actually
happened.
And it was almost as if shewas waiting for him to come back
and to be able to slip intohis uniform again and be the pride
(23:57):
of the Mitch clan.
And that really is a lot ofwhat goes into this particular stage
of grief.
There's work to be done here.
There is work to be done thatI think we have to be mindful of.
And it.
It's one of the reasons whyfor a lot of therapists, they talk
(24:18):
about it in terms of grief work.
It's not something that Ipassively wait for.
Time heals all wounds, becauseit won't.
Time will.
Will make things worse if I donothing with it.
On the other hand, if I dosomething with it, it will.
It will be an active part ofmy healing and recovery from the
(24:42):
grief that I would experienceand what I might feel.
So all of that is very much apart of this spring of our grief
that we experience.
There are a lot of otherthings that show up, like psychological
symptoms that look likedepression, things like that.
It is the same thing thatpeople experience during the spring.
(25:09):
And everything is waking up,like I said.
The feelings of sadness andanger and blame and guilt and regret
and anxiety are all very mucha part of that.
So you have the physical sideof it, and then you have the physical
or the emotional side of it, Ishould say.
And then the physical side,where there's a hollowness in the
(25:32):
stomach that people willreport or a tightness in the chest.
Interestingly enough, a lot oftimes people end up in the ER experiencing
an anxiety attack and thinkingthey're having a heart attack, and
that would be a part of this.
And oversensitivity to noisethey experience, or a sense of depersonalization
(25:52):
where they're walking down thestreet and nothing seems real, including
themselves.
See, all of that is very mucha part of the spring of our grief.
And when it comes to how wethink, there's confusion.
There is this sense ofdisbelief, which obviously is very
understandable.
There's a sense of presence,like somebody is watching over us,
(26:15):
the person who's died.
And it can get severe enoughthat it would precipitate some significant
mental health interventions,like hallucinations and things like
that.
So you can have all of thatwithin this season time that I think
is worth noting and payingattention to behaviorally.
(26:37):
You can have socialwithdrawal, you can have long periods
of tearfulness, visiting theplaces that remind them of that person.
All of those things are verymuch a part of this springtime.
As I said, they idealize theperson who's died, and they may actually
(26:58):
move away altogether.
It's called a geographic cure.
And they may actually moveaway just to get away from all the
memories that are contained inthe spots that they visited or the
house or anything else thatthey might experience.
So the thing to keep in mindis with every season, certain tools
(27:19):
are necessary.
And one of those tools that Iencourage people to engage in, and
I do myself, is just journaling.
And that's not trying to beHemingway here.
It's just a reflection on theday and what you're experiencing
and the thoughts that you'rehaving and the confusing emotions
(27:39):
that might be assaulting us inthe midst of all of that.
And there's some physicalthings that somebody can do if somebody
has actually died, and that'ssorting through belongings and actually
giving people around them thepermission to talk about the person
who has died themselves.
So the one thing that alwayscomes into the picture, and I mentioned
(28:04):
this early in the starting ofdoing this podcast, is regret and
guilt and shame.
And there's a specificdefinitions that I want to make sure
I get clear here when I talkabout guilt.
Because regret is I shouldhave done X, Y and Z.
(28:26):
And if I had, then the personmay not have died.
And there's lots of peoplethat think that way.
And kids even think that wayif they hadn't misbehaved, their
parent wouldn't have died orsomething along those lines.
But guilt is when I haveviolated a moral standard.
Shame is an assault and acondemnation of my person, who I
(28:50):
am, my identity itself.
That's what shame really isall about.
So it's very easy to jump fromviolating a moral standard, which
I can change and I canimprove, I can do it differently,
I can avoid doing that, andthat would resolve the guilt.
But it moves from I've donesomething bad to I am bad.
(29:13):
And that's really where shamecomes into the picture.
And it really complicates thegrieving process because there is
a self punishment motif thatcomes in and me feeling miserable
and, and feeling all thethings that I am, I deserve because
(29:33):
of the kind of person I am.
And that's what has impactedthe person that I cared about who
died.
So all of those things arevery much a part of that.
And then feeling victimized bylife, victimized by death of the
person, all of those thingsare very much a part of the landscape.
And seeking out some kind ofsupport group of some sort or other
(29:57):
people in our lives that havebeen through the grieving process
and are not going to tell youto just, you know, to just suck it
up and get on with lifebecause it's not going to get much
better, and this is not goingto change.
And that's just the way life is.
And those kind of people youshould run from, those are not the
(30:17):
people that you need to bearound because of the nature of what
they're suggesting is not toembrace the reality in which we live.
And those are very importantthat those kinds of people tend to
complicate the picture ofgrieving for many of us and what
we experience.
So the spring of our grief isan important phase of work that we
(30:42):
have to do during this time.
And that's why I wanted tospend some time talking about it,
because we have a very strongbent to dilute and distort and to
run away from all of thethings that are very much a part
of the significance ofgrieving and the grieving of a person
(31:06):
of significance to us.
And we have to make sure thatwe allow that to exist.
I mean, think about it.
If you go back and look at thebook of Job, you could say that Job
went through a significantlevel of grieving at losing all of
his kids and all of hisbelongings and everything.
(31:28):
His life was completelydecimated entirely.
And his friends did a reallygood job, actually, in the first
seven days because they didn'tsay anything.
The minute that they openedtheir mouths was the moment at which
everything went south.
Because generally most oftheir attention and attempts was
(31:49):
to blame Job for why he got inthe position he was in.
And that's not helpful,needless to say.
But unfortunately, thegrieving person does that as well.
They're already blamingthemselves for the situation that
they're in.
And the way out.
(32:09):
There doesn't seem to be a way out.
And in a lot of cases, you endup finding people engaging what we
might call learnedhelplessness, where they just give
up.
They give up because it's notgoing to get any better.
Then no matter what they do,is not going to make anything any
better, so why bother?
And so they'll spiral into anaddiction, or they'll spiral into
(32:33):
the social withdrawal and justpulling away from people because
they don't want to experiencethe loss again.
And that's entirely understandable.
I think generally, in my earlyyears after my dad died, that would
be me.
I had withdrawn from people.
Now, the funny thing about itis if you talked to anybody around
(32:57):
me, they would have neverknown that I was withdrawn from them.
I put on an appearance ofconnectedness and.
And engagement when I waspretty well disengaged from investing
in relationships where I couldget hurt.
Again or somebody could leaveme again.
And that was very much a partof that as well.
(33:19):
So the spring of our grief isan important aspect of it.
And seasons, I think areworthwhile considering looking at
grief in that frame or fromthat lens because there's a respect
and what I want to say, aspecific connection to living life
(33:44):
that way.
Because we live life inseasons as well.
We do.
I think we experience that.
And that is why shouldn't weexperience our grief the same way?
And that was on my mind andheart to talk about tonight.
And hopefully it will give yousomething to think about.
And if you have questions,Feel free to DM me on Instagram @SG
(34:11):
International and other placeson Facebook I can be found and any
messages can be left atStained Glass International in Facebook
and in LinkedIn it's Ray Mitch.
(34:32):
So all of those things, pleasejoin us.
Please join thecommunity@sgi-net.org and subscribe
and follow the goings on thatare going on in the community there.
As soon as you hit the webpageyou'll be asked if you want to, it's
free, you can sign up, you'llget the newsletter.
(34:53):
You will be able to see all ofthe things that are going on in the
community that is slowly butsurely developing in the SGI community.
So the other podcast I alreadymentioned to you was the Outpost
podcast.
That too can be found inwhatever platform you listen to podcasts,
(35:15):
whether that's Apple podcastsor whether that's I Heart Media or
whether that's Spotify orwhatever that might be.
You can find us in any one ofthose places.
I already mentioned the socialmedia Instagram @SGI, underscore
International, Facebook,Stained Glass International and LinkedIn.
(35:36):
Dr.
Mitch.
So any of those you can findus and check out all the resources
that are on the website thereand the store as well.
You can pick up my new bookthat released in January called Seasons
of Our Grief and you can findout so many things about that.
So there's merchandise thereif you're interested in a window
(36:00):
sticker or other pieces thatmight be of interest to you as well.
So hit us up on the website.
Join us there if you want tosupport us.
Thank you, thank you ever somuch to, to support us and to give
to our scholarship fundhelping it help making it possible
(36:21):
for people to go to a silent retreat.
That is though there's onecoming up this spring and that's
again, that's a reason to signup on the community because you'll
be able to find out when it isand where to go to sign up.
So if you want to donate, youcan do that on the website.
(36:43):
There's a donate tab.
Or if you'd rather send us acheck, you can do that to SGIPO,
Box 322 East Lake, Colorado 80614.
And that is it for tonight.
Thanks so much for joining me.
I appreciate your time.
I hope there's been somethinghere of interest.
And if you want to know more,or if you want to hear me talk more
(37:07):
about the seasons, I'd behappy to do that.
Just us know or let me know onthe website or on the social media
outlets.
Until next time.
Love you later.
Bye.
Well, welcome everybody, toanother edition of the unscripted
podcast, the Collected Wisdomof Life, Living and Sorrow.
And as the name implies, itreally doesn't have a script.
I come into these with certainthemes and other things that are
pressed into my awareness byGod and by inner relationships with
(00:47):
people and things that I notice.
And that's why I'm sittingdown and just sharing those with
you.
So thanks so much for takingsome time out of your schedule to
sit down and reflect with meabout life and living and ultimately
the subtext of our lives,which I think is really going to
be there as long as we're human.
(01:09):
And I don't know at what pointwe won't be, but is just sorrow and
loss and the nature of that.
And this week has been aheavy, heavy, heavy reminder of that.
In my experience, it seemslike you can't get out of a month
without hearing or knowingsomeone or some family that has been
(01:35):
affected by loss in one way or another.
And that's certainly been thecase for me this week.
I attend a group of men and wehad a young guy, at least in my estimation,
and we won't get into my ageto compare, but he contracted an
(01:58):
illness that once you'vecontracted it, you don't get rid
of it.
And it eventually took hislife and he died.
And so the biggest challenge Ithink we face is something that Paul
talks about in Thessalonianswhen he talks about us particularly
grieving people that we knowhave trusted Jesus.
(02:22):
How do we grieve, but grievewith hope?
And in a lot of cases, we endup using the hope against our grief
rather than allowing our griefto exist.
And that really is a part ofwhat some of what I want to talk
about tonight in looking atand thinking about what I call the
(02:44):
spring of our grief.
If you're interested and wantto know more about it, check out
my book on thebookstore@sgi-net.org and you can
go to the store and you willfind it there for purchase.
And it's entitled the Seasonsof Our Grief.
And one of the biggestchallenges I think we face, and I
(03:06):
just noticed it even this weekbecause we had an election and half
of the people were unsatisfiedwith the outcome.
And it seems like it is burnedinto the cultural consciousness to
think of our grief in terms ofstages rather than in terms of seasons.
(03:29):
And I think I've been puzzlingover this lately about why does that
hang on so tightly?
Why do we hang on so tightlyto the idea of stages And I think
part of it, the onlyconclusion I've come to, even over
the years, because I haveforwarded the idea of there being
(03:53):
seasons of grief rather thanstages of grief, is that we like
to maintain a sense of controlover the uncontrollable.
And the way to do that is toidentify the stage that we're in.
And that way we can find somevalidity around it or something a
(04:17):
little bit like that.
And that's.
I think, that the teachingvalue, the opportunity for learning
that exists in sorrow is awillingness to lean into our helplessness
and our inability to handle things.
(04:39):
And ultimately, when we get tothat, then the question is, well,
then what do I do?
And what that means then is ifI'm going to confront my vulnerability,
my helplessness, and not inall things, but certainly around
death, that's for sure.
Then I am called either tocontrol more things in order to make
(05:02):
sure I don't feel the pain ofthe sorrow, or I have to choose to
trust someone bigger than mewho has a clear idea of what is going
on and how we might actuallyhave a God that is invested in redeeming
(05:24):
the universe in such a way sothat at some point we can actually
live without sorrow ever.
And that's a.
It seems like a pipe dream, Ithink, to a lot of people that that's
simply impossible.
And then I gotta go back totrust again, because I'm trusting
someone's word, if you will,about that.
(05:45):
And I think generally we don'treally like that much.
And so one of the things thatI have been thinking about, because
I had.
We've had a lot of snow herein Colorado.
It's an early season Novembersnow that's usually really, really
(06:07):
wet.
And I was supposed to speaklast Thursday at Focus on the Family
about the seasons of our grief.
And I had talked a little bitabout the nature of grief and how
we got to where we are and thethings that really go into that.
(06:29):
And the way that we thinkthrough some of these things ends
up being either stages orphases or something similar to that.
That is very much a part ofthe landscape in what we're talking
(06:50):
about here and what I want totalk about here.
But I think some of it is thatwe judge the stages as more understandable
than describing it in reallyany other way.
And even when we talk aboutdevelopment, usually we're most comfortable
(07:11):
in talking about stages.
So it's a stage they're goingthrough when we're talking about
kids or something like that.
And there are other ways toThink about grief development, physical,
emotional, psychological.
All of those developments, ifyou will, are put into.
(07:36):
Which is the most popular oneis Erickson's stages.
And there are eight stagesthat people go through from birth
to death.
And they make sense of things,but there is not bright lines on
the edges of those stages.
You don't just cross over intoone, and now we're there.
And the same thing with movingon to the next one, although I think
(07:58):
we find some kind of comfortin knowing where we are in stages
allows us to do that.
So I think ultimately, in alot of cases, it's just easier to
talk about stages than it isto talk about our experience with
grief, rather than how we canpredict it and explain it and understand
(08:20):
where we are now.
We can still do that withseasons, but it's not nearly as bright
and it's not nearly as cut and dried.
And I think we find somemeasure of safety in the certainty
of the stages that we do.
And so one of the biggestproblems we have in dealing with
(08:44):
grief is that when we usewords like stages or phases or things
like that, it tends to imply acertain level of passivity, like,
I'm just waiting for me topass through it, and I'll pass through
it.
I just need to hang on andsurvive and do the best I can with
what I've got, and then.
And then I'll be done right.
(09:05):
And the whole idea of stagesare very similar to that.
It seems like it's more of anidentification structure or a way
to identify things rather thanan actual experience.
And I've had that told to meover and over again.
I have experienced it myself.
(09:27):
It's not nearly as cut anddried as that.
I can exist in two stages atthe same time.
And most people will hearkenback to Kubler Ross's stages.
And the one thing that I wouldremind everybody who's listening
is Elizabeth Kubler.
Ross wrote her book aboutdeath and dying, not about grief
(09:50):
and grieving.
And in a lot of ways, she had made.
She's made comments beforeabout she never really intended the
stages to be used in talkingabout grief, because it's a different
thing.
It's an entirely different thing.
And so it goes into a lot moreof our need for certainty and predictability
(10:15):
and explanation and ultimatelycontrol that the stages are really
all about.
And because of that, then eventhe conversation with a loss in the
arena of politics, people weretalking about what stages they were
in.
And it's like, it's not really stages.
Let's just talk about where weare, instead of saying what stage
(10:38):
I'm in or what I'm not, andhow do I describe the landscape as
I experience it right now?
And so, like I said, I thinkit's easier to talk about stages.
I think it's better and evenmore accurate to talk about seasons.
And here in Colorado, anddepending on where you're at, as
(10:59):
you're listening to thispodcast, is that you may be in a
different season.
In most of North America, itis the fall.
And fall means differentthings for different parts of our
country.
Obviously the Southwest, it'sgoing to be maybe a little cooler,
maybe.
(11:19):
And in the north, it meanssnow and cold, temps and all the
things that go with that.
So it means different things.
It's not nearly as clean cut,I think, as the stages tend to have
us believe.
And the worst part about that,just to add to that point, the worst
(11:41):
part about that is that one,it makes it sound like it should
be predictable.
And two, once I'm through it,I'm done.
I don't have to do it again.
And that's just fundamentallynot true.
It does not comport at allwith the reality of people's experiences
of going through grief.
So I think it's better tothink in terms of the seasons because
(12:06):
ultimately, in a lot of ways,we're trying to describe the indescribable.
And what we end up bypassingis being present with the indescribable,
the things that we don't like,if you will.
And that really is asignificant part.
What I prefer to do is to talkabout grief and the things that we
(12:29):
experience in grief and sorrowin more in the sense of seasons that
we experience and certainthings that we need to engage in,
we need to do something with.
And one writer in particularcalls it tasks.
And even when we think aboutthe physical world of development,
(12:50):
we talk about tasks there as well.
And that certainly is the casehere with what I want to talk about
tonight.
When we're looking at theseason of our grief and I reflect
on it based on my own season,because at the front end, generally
(13:11):
the grieving process startswith winter.
Everything's dead.
I am numb.
I can get things done.
I can do a lot of things.
I mean, I.
And the funny thing about itis that's usually during the time
when we're actually doing thememorial services and the celebrations
of life and the wake and allthe other words that are kind of
(13:34):
rooted in culture or anyparticular culture in some respects.
Where I grew up in theNorthwest, in Indiana, And Illinois
area, there were funeral homes.
So you went to a home to visitsomebody who was dead.
So it's just a weird, strangewarp of language.
(13:58):
And our language tends tobetray how badly we want to try to
do what I would call Gilda Lily.
In other words, I want to makeit look better than it is.
Because if I can make it lookbetter, I can twist reality into
my own liking rather than livein the reality as I have it.
And so when we hit the spring,everything wakes up just like in
(14:22):
spring.
Winter can intrude in spring,just like summer can intrude in spring.
And it's during the springthat we are fighting between reality
and the reality we wish itwould be.
And in some respects we end upfabricating a reality that suits
(14:44):
our efforts to not feel whathas actually happened.
And as I said over this lastweek or so, what I have experienced
is I had a.
And I would call, I don't knowif I call it devastating, but it
was a significant loss that Ihad last March.
(15:04):
And this only kind oftriggered a lot of those emotions
that I believe if I were doingmy own self diagnosis, which is not
wise to do because I've got avested interest in terms of how this
is going to look and feel andeverything else.
But I would say that I'm inthe spring of my grief.
(15:27):
And so what has happened thenis that the emotions will wake up
and then they will go dormant.
It doesn't mean they don't youstop feeling anything, but it does
mean that we end up feeling.
We have these rises and falls.
So you can have spring dayswhere it feels like summer, and then
(15:50):
you can have spring days, itfeels like winter and, and everything
in between.
And ultimately everything iswaking up.
And so is my.
And our emotional apparatus,if you will, all the feelings start
showing up.
And generally this is whenpeople have the most work to do,
(16:11):
if you will, around handlingand engaging with the loss that they
experience.
And so the temptation is forwhat would otherwise be labeled as
denial is so much more thanthat because we can minimize the
significance of the loss.
(16:32):
We can minimize the importanceof the person.
I can engage in a certainlevel of spiritualism, like people
becoming angels kind of idea.
And even in the Christianrealm we have that and we have that
kind of language.
And some of it is really justto try to take the sting out of what
(16:54):
has actually happened.
So all of our dreams of whatwe wished it could have been are
now made possible by willinglisteners who don't know the history.
They don't know where they'vecome from.
They don't know enough of thehistory to question whether or not
what we're talking about istrue or not.
And so we can add and subtractin terms of the history that we have.
(17:18):
And so we end up beingbombarded by all the emotions that
would otherwise have beendenied somewhere.
And these start coming at usfast and furious during this springtime
of our grief.
And this is usually the timewhen we end up distorting things
and diluting, making them lesspowerful or even magnifying them
(17:42):
and being overwhelmed by them.
All of that is very much apart of the landscape of this springtime
of our grief and how weexperience it and what it actually
looks like.
So the other layer I think wehave to contend with is a cultural
layer.
And my wife and I just wastalking about she went to a celebration
(18:07):
of life service.
And a lot of people have somereally strange ideas about grief.
And they can make it as if itreally didn't happen or it wasn't
that big of a deal.
Now, one thing that I think isinstructive from Elizabeth Kubler
Ross is she makes mention ofthe fact that anticipatory grief
(18:33):
is something very differentthan grief itself.
We experience it differently,we see it differently, we experience
different emotions even duringthat time.
And when the person finallydies, something else hits us, then
it's not quite the same.
So a lot of times people thinkof grief as something that they can
(18:55):
do on credit.
And if I do it now, then Iwon't have to do it later.
And that's not entirely true, really.
And one of the things that isso embedded in our culture is that,
and I think a lot of peoplejust feel it viscerally and they
don't know is speaking ill ofthe dead is that they can't defend
(19:21):
themselves.
So what am I doing?
Why would I do that?
And the reality is people arereally, really pretty complicated.
And when somebody dies, whatwe choose to reminisce about or talk
about or reflect on oftentimesbecause of that very thing of you
(19:43):
don't speak ill of the deadbecause something is going to happen.
What you end up finding isthat the person sounds as if they
should be inducted into the sainthood.
In the Catholic Church, whenthey were complicated people, they
had their own fair share of brokenness.
And that brokenness eithercould refine them into becoming deeper
(20:09):
and deeper people, or it couldimpact them to becoming bitter people
or cynical people or overlyoptimistic people that can't see
the negative of anything.
Because they're afraid that ifthey do, they will just get sucked
into this vortex of negativity.
(20:32):
And all of those things are aproblem because we're not living
in reality as it is.
Instead, we're trying tocreate a reality as we would have
it be.
And the challenge, I think, isthat when somebody dies or we lose
(20:54):
somebody, are we going to talkabout it in a realistic fashion,
or are we going to talk aboutit in an idealistic fashion and thereby
only feed more and more fuelinto the denial of what I am actually
experiencing.
And I can go down that route,but it ends up aborting a lot of
(21:17):
the effort and a lot of thework that I have to do in my grief
process and how it actuallyfeels and the nature of what that
is.
So whatever it is, there is adistinct effort on the people involved
that are left behind to keepintact whatever the idealistic notion
(21:42):
is rather than the realistic notion.
Now, let me give you anexample, even from my own life.
My dad passed away.
My dad died when I was 12.
He was a not a Vietnam.
He was a great war vet.
He was a World War II vet.
He had fought some stints inGuadalcanal in the South Pacific.
(22:04):
He was a Marine, and also somestints on Iwo Jima, one of the most
deadliest battles in the South Pacific.
And I believe, looking back asa kid, that.
That he probably had somepretty significant PTSD after all
that he saw with his service.
(22:28):
And after he died, my mom didthings like mummifying his remains.
Not his remains meaning body.
He was buried bodily.
But there was a closet in ourhouse that was a cedar closet.
It was lined in cedar, whichwould allow the clothes to stay intact
(22:50):
and not get moth eaten oranything like that.
Usually the clothes that cameout smell pretty good on top of it
all.
And me as a kid would oftenlike to.
When I was a little kid, I'dlove to hide in a closet.
And it was in that closet thatshe kept his dress blues from the
(23:12):
Marine Corps and then also hisregular uniform.
And it was usually a drabgreen kind of color.
And I still vividly remember that.
And that stayed that way for along, long, long time until she had
a fire in the house and ittook out that whole thing.
(23:34):
And otherwise it probablywould have still been there by the
time we ended up liquidatingthe estate and selling off the house.
And that's kind of a way todeny the reality of what actually
happened.
And it was almost as if shewas waiting for him to come back
and to be able to slip intohis uniform again and be the pride
(23:57):
of the Mitch clan.
And that really is a lot ofwhat goes into this particular stage
of grief.
There's work to be done here.
There is work to be done thatI think we have to be mindful of.
And it.
It's one of the reasons whyfor a lot of therapists, they talk
(24:18):
about it in terms of grief work.
It's not something that Ipassively wait for.
Time heals all wounds, becauseit won't.
Time will.
Will make things worse if I donothing with it.
On the other hand, if I dosomething with it, it will.
It will be an active part ofmy healing and recovery from the
(24:42):
grief that I would experienceand what I might feel.
So all of that is very much apart of this spring of our grief
that we experience.
There are a lot of otherthings that show up, like psychological
symptoms that look likedepression, things like that.
It is the same thing thatpeople experience during the spring.
(25:09):
And everything is waking up,like I said.
The feelings of sadness andanger and blame and guilt and regret
and anxiety are all very mucha part of that.
So you have the physical sideof it, and then you have the physical
or the emotional side of it, Ishould say.
And then the physical side,where there's a hollowness in the
(25:32):
stomach that people willreport or a tightness in the chest.
Interestingly enough, a lot oftimes people end up in the ER experiencing
an anxiety attack and thinkingthey're having a heart attack, and
that would be a part of this.
And oversensitivity to noisethey experience, or a sense of depersonalization
(25:52):
where they're walking down thestreet and nothing seems real, including
themselves.
See, all of that is very mucha part of the spring of our grief.
And when it comes to how wethink, there's confusion.
There is this sense ofdisbelief, which obviously is very
understandable.
There's a sense of presence,like somebody is watching over us,
(26:15):
the person who's died.
And it can get severe enoughthat it would precipitate some significant
mental health interventions,like hallucinations and things like
that.
So you can have all of thatwithin this season time that I think
is worth noting and payingattention to behaviorally.
(26:37):
You can have socialwithdrawal, you can have long periods
of tearfulness, visiting theplaces that remind them of that person.
All of those things are verymuch a part of this springtime.
As I said, they idealize theperson who's died, and they may actually
(26:58):
move away altogether.
It's called a geographic cure.
And they may actually moveaway just to get away from all the
memories that are contained inthe spots that they visited or the
house or anything else thatthey might experience.
So the thing to keep in mindis with every season, certain tools
(27:19):
are necessary.
And one of those tools that Iencourage people to engage in, and
I do myself, is just journaling.
And that's not trying to beHemingway here.
It's just a reflection on theday and what you're experiencing
and the thoughts that you'rehaving and the confusing emotions
(27:39):
that might be assaulting us inthe midst of all of that.
And there's some physicalthings that somebody can do if somebody
has actually died, and that'ssorting through belongings and actually
giving people around them thepermission to talk about the person
who has died themselves.
So the one thing that alwayscomes into the picture, and I mentioned
(28:04):
this early in the starting ofdoing this podcast, is regret and
guilt and shame.
And there's a specificdefinitions that I want to make sure
I get clear here when I talkabout guilt.
Because regret is I shouldhave done X, Y and Z.
(28:26):
And if I had, then the personmay not have died.
And there's lots of peoplethat think that way.
And kids even think that wayif they hadn't misbehaved, their
parent wouldn't have died orsomething along those lines.
But guilt is when I haveviolated a moral standard.
Shame is an assault and acondemnation of my person, who I
(28:50):
am, my identity itself.
That's what shame really isall about.
So it's very easy to jump fromviolating a moral standard, which
I can change and I canimprove, I can do it differently,
I can avoid doing that, andthat would resolve the guilt.
But it moves from I've donesomething bad to I am bad.
(29:13):
And that's really where shamecomes into the picture.
And it really complicates thegrieving process because there is
a self punishment motif thatcomes in and me feeling miserable
and, and feeling all thethings that I am, I deserve because
(29:33):
of the kind of person I am.
And that's what has impactedthe person that I cared about who
died.
So all of those things arevery much a part of that.
And then feeling victimized bylife, victimized by death of the
person, all of those thingsare very much a part of the landscape.
And seeking out some kind ofsupport group of some sort or other
(29:57):
people in our lives that havebeen through the grieving process
and are not going to tell youto just, you know, to just suck it
up and get on with lifebecause it's not going to get much
better, and this is not goingto change.
And that's just the way life is.
And those kind of people youshould run from, those are not the
(30:17):
people that you need to bearound because of the nature of what
they're suggesting is not toembrace the reality in which we live.
And those are very importantthat those kinds of people tend to
complicate the picture ofgrieving for many of us and what
we experience.
So the spring of our grief isan important phase of work that we
(30:42):
have to do during this time.
And that's why I wanted tospend some time talking about it,
because we have a very strongbent to dilute and distort and to
run away from all of thethings that are very much a part
of the significance ofgrieving and the grieving of a person
(31:06):
of significance to us.
And we have to make sure thatwe allow that to exist.
I mean, think about it.
If you go back and look at thebook of Job, you could say that Job
went through a significantlevel of grieving at losing all of
his kids and all of hisbelongings and everything.
(31:28):
His life was completelydecimated entirely.
And his friends did a reallygood job, actually, in the first
seven days because they didn'tsay anything.
The minute that they openedtheir mouths was the moment at which
everything went south.
Because generally most oftheir attention and attempts was
(31:49):
to blame Job for why he got inthe position he was in.
And that's not helpful,needless to say.
But unfortunately, thegrieving person does that as well.
They're already blamingthemselves for the situation that
they're in.
And the way out.
(32:09):
There doesn't seem to be a way out.
And in a lot of cases, you endup finding people engaging what we
might call learnedhelplessness, where they just give
up.
They give up because it's notgoing to get any better.
Then no matter what they do,is not going to make anything any
better, so why bother?
And so they'll spiral into anaddiction, or they'll spiral into
(32:33):
the social withdrawal and justpulling away from people because
they don't want to experiencethe loss again.
And that's entirely understandable.
I think generally, in my earlyyears after my dad died, that would
be me.
I had withdrawn from people.
Now, the funny thing about itis if you talked to anybody around
(32:57):
me, they would have neverknown that I was withdrawn from them.
I put on an appearance ofconnectedness and.
And engagement when I waspretty well disengaged from investing
in relationships where I couldget hurt.
Again or somebody could leaveme again.
And that was very much a partof that as well.
(33:19):
So the spring of our grief isan important aspect of it.
And seasons, I think areworthwhile considering looking at
grief in that frame or fromthat lens because there's a respect
and what I want to say, aspecific connection to living life
(33:44):
that way.
Because we live life inseasons as well.
We do.
I think we experience that.
And that is why shouldn't weexperience our grief the same way?
And that was on my mind andheart to talk about tonight.
And hopefully it will give yousomething to think about.
And if you have questions,Feel free to DM me on Instagram @SG
(34:11):
International and other placeson Facebook I can be found and any
messages can be left atStained Glass International in Facebook
and in LinkedIn it's Ray Mitch.
(34:32):
So all of those things, pleasejoin us.
Please join thecommunity@sgi-net.org and subscribe
and follow the goings on thatare going on in the community there.
As soon as you hit the webpageyou'll be asked if you want to, it's
free, you can sign up, you'llget the newsletter.
(34:53):
You will be able to see all ofthe things that are going on in the
community that is slowly butsurely developing in the SGI community.
So the other podcast I alreadymentioned to you was the Outpost
podcast.
That too can be found inwhatever platform you listen to podcasts,
(35:15):
whether that's Apple podcastsor whether that's I Heart Media or
whether that's Spotify orwhatever that might be.
You can find us in any one ofthose places.
I already mentioned the socialmedia Instagram @SGI, underscore
International, Facebook,Stained Glass International and LinkedIn.
(35:36):
Dr.
Mitch.
So any of those you can findus and check out all the resources
that are on the website thereand the store as well.
You can pick up my new bookthat released in January called Seasons
of Our Grief and you can findout so many things about that.
So there's merchandise thereif you're interested in a window
(36:00):
sticker or other pieces thatmight be of interest to you as well.
So hit us up on the website.
Join us there if you want tosupport us.
Thank you, thank you ever somuch to, to support us and to give
to our scholarship fundhelping it help making it possible
(36:21):
for people to go to a silent retreat.
That is though there's onecoming up this spring and that's
again, that's a reason to signup on the community because you'll
be able to find out when it isand where to go to sign up.
So if you want to donate, youcan do that on the website.
(36:43):
There's a donate tab.
Or if you'd rather send us acheck, you can do that to SGIPO,
Box 322 East Lake, Colorado 80614.
And that is it for tonight.
Thanks so much for joining me.
I appreciate your time.
I hope there's been somethinghere of interest.
And if you want to know more,or if you want to hear me talk more
(37:07):
about the seasons, I'd behappy to do that.
Just us know or let me know onthe website or on the social media
outlets.
Until next time.
Love you later.
Bye.
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