Thoughts on Being a Grief Companion
This was posted on a young widow board and I felt that it was a wonderfully eloquent way of expressing how those of us who have experienced deep grief feel as well as being something many of us wish our family and friends understood.
"Alan Wolfelt has given considerable thought to the role of a grief “companion.” According to Wolfelt, being a Companion is about:
• Honoring the spirit – it is not about focusing on the intellect
• Curiosity – it is not about expertise
• Learning from others – it is not about teaching them
• Walking alongside – it is not about leading
• Being still – it is not about frantic movement forward
• Discovering the gifts of sacred silence – it is not about filling every painful moment with words
• Listening with the heart – it is not about analyzing with the head
• Bearing witness to the struggles of others – it is not about directing those struggles
• Being present to another person’s pain – it is not about taking away the pain
• Respecting disorder and confusion – it is not about imposing order and logic
• Going to the wilderness of the soul with another human being – it is not about thinking you are responsible for finding the way out.
In looking at models surrounding grief and loss, Wolfelt believes we are confronted with three forces that might be framed as risks:
Risk #1: In our culture, the predominant bereavement care model for the bereaved is a medical model: assessing, diagnosing, and treating grief as an illness.
Risk #2: That bereavement caregivers may mirror our culture by supporting the quick-fix medical model approach to what is really a soul-based journey.
Risk #3: That bereavement caregivers see themselves as a separate class of “master” grief educators and counselors.
Wolfelt continues: I believe the limitations of our clinical, medical models are profound and far-reaching. Our modern understanding of grief all too often projects that for “successful” mourning to take pace, the person must disengage from the deceased and, by all means, “let go.” We even have all sorts of books full of techniques on how to help others “let go” or reach “closure.”
Our modern understanding of grief all too often conveys that the end result of bereavement is a series of completed tasks, extinguished pain, and the establishment of new relationships. In attempting to make a science of grief, we have compartmentalized complex emotions with neat clinical labels.
Wolfelt then goes on to state that a perfect state of reestablishment is impossible because:
A person’s life is changed forever after the death of someone loved.
The grief journey requires contemplation and turning inward. In other words, it includes sadness, anxiety, and loss of control. It requires going to the wilderness. Quietness and emptiness invite the heart to observe signs of sacredness, to regain purpose, to rediscover love, to renew life!
Searching for meaning, reasons to get one’s feet out of bed, and understanding the pain of loss are not the domain of the medical modes of bereavement care. Experience has taught me that it is the mysterious, spiritual dimension of grief that harbors the capacity to go on living until we, too, die.
Our current models desperately need a “supplement of the soul.” We need, as caregivers and as fellow travelers in the journey into grief, more life-giving, hope-filled models that incorporate not only the mind and body, but the soul and spirit."
