Terms of Endearment - #empathyforgrief - Break the Silent Struggle With Grief

Welcome to Mother's Backyard Buzz E7

Here we are at episode number seven of #empathyforgrief podcast where we "break the silent struggle" around grief by unpacking my book: "My Backyard Garden - A Memoir of How Love Conquers Grief." We're taking our time, so I'm still unpacking the Introduction section of my book. If you have a copy of the book, I'm sure you've passed where we are. But the whole objective of the book and podcast is about life long learning, reflection, experience, and growth. I know I sound like your local learning professional, and I am. This is Debra Hester sharing my personal grief journey. I'm blessed to be the author and your host of #empathyforgrief podcast. Let's get moving and delve into what I included and didn't include in my book that speaks to this journey we all take called grief.

Let's Talk and Walk in Five Stages

Do you know the stages of grief? I had heard of them before my mother's death. At that time, in my mind, they were just another model that was created from someone's college research study. After my mother died, and I realized I was on this grief journey, I Googled them. That's when I found out there are five stages of grief that explain the series of emotions a person can experience when they have lost a loved one. What I didn't realize was that there are also seven stages of grief.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the five stages of grief. Just as a refresher, the five stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They are all pretty straight forward in their meaning except for "bargaining." So for the purpose of our topic today, how I've understood the bargaining stage is that it's an attempt, please note the word "attempt" to negotiate pain away.

When I initially learned about these, if I wasn't already in the anger stage of grief, I automatically went there, to the anger stage. I though how dare someone tell me how I'm going to progress through the grief process and come to acceptance. And who says, "I'm angry now and depressed later versus just always depressed. I tell you when I very first looked at this as a resource, I felt helpless. I ignored this entire concept and model because I wasn't following this. This wasn't what and especially how I was feeling. The stages were not tracking with me.

I thought that no one was going to be able to help me. Especially if the stages of grief were the best the information age had to offer: just five, looking like a shortlist to me, stages of grief.

Seven Stages Forward And Five Steps Back

So now, let's move to the seven "emotional" stages of grief. And I think it would be helpful to remember and include in the label "emotional" stages of grief. They start with shock or disbelief. Next comes the same as before: denial and bargaining. We add "guild" and continue with anger, depression, and "hope" as a Part of "acceptance": "hope/acceptance" as the final seven emotional stages of grief. Now, if we count all th terms separately, I would count nine emotions. I definitely went through both the "shock" and "disbelief" stages. And , it wasn't an "either/or" moment; but a both of these emotions.

I know its' only a framework, but I can't believe I'm the only person who saw this resource and shock my head in disbelief. So I'm all about breaking the silent struggle around grief and trying to tell you that what you're feeling is normal and you're not alone. So, if you're not tracking or seeing your journey in the stages of grief, you're not alone. It's O.K.

A Grief Journey That's Human

After I experience the death of my mother, I looked at grief differently. What I'm most afraid of is that many people who haven't truly experienced a grief journey may think that these stages are all there is to grief. These emotions, these stages of grief define how we, the grieving, are feeling and will feel. I know it's an attempt. I want to be clear to my listeners that it is just that: "an attempt" because I am still writing about my grief journey and I'm closer to "words can not explain how I feel."

I've found that many things come back again as you move through your grief journey. When the stages of grief returned to my thoughts, I began to wonder and ask myself, are they "stages" or responses to the pain of loosing a loved one? For one, stages made me feel like they were sequential or steps and I had some type of order, like they were placed. There is not specific order, I was so all over the place emotionally. I realized that I don't care for the word stages either. A picture of me on a revolving stage came to my mind. I don't mean to be trite, but let's be real, they are emotional responses. We are human, we have emotional reactions to things.

A stage makes it feel like there is some defined period, and then you move on. Not. And most of the emotions seem not very positive, and that was not always true. At t...