When you are going through a hard time in life and you need to grieve, a lot of times, we don’t know how.
And then the people around us don’t know how to help us grieve or how to acknowledge or understand that we are grieving.
And so today in this article, we’re gonna talk about it.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have been through some stuff.
If you have been through some stuff, I want you to type in the comments here and just say, I’ve been through some stuff.
I don’t even know what you all have been through.
But listen, I’ll just say one thing, when I went through divorce, that was probably the hardest thing I have ever dealt with in my entire life.
And then the second was the loss of my grandma which was a year ago.
It was super hard.
I was devastated through the divorce and through the loss of my grandma.
I’m thankful that I had been in therapy for years now so that I could know what it looked like when I needed to grieve.
But when I found out that my ex-husband was being unfaithful, I didn’t know how to grieve.
I didn’t know all these different things and stages, and so I wanted to take some time to talk about it.
So, I’m not a scholar and I’m not a psychiatrist counselor or any of that.
But I remember when I was starting the process of divorce and I went to therapy, we had a previous counselor that we would go to for our marriage in general.
And so I went back to her because she already knew me and knew parts of him.
And one of the first things that she said to me was that there are five stages of grief.
1st Stage – Denial
2nd Stage – Anger
3rd Stage – Bargaining
4th Stage – Depression
Fifth Stage – Acceptance
And I had no idea that that was a thing.
Well, I actually think the reason why she brought that up in my therapy session was because I came to her one day and said, “I feel relieved. I feel happy. I feel so thankful that I’m no longer with him”
And we weren’t even officially divorced yet.
I was like, “why do I feel so happy?”
And she said, “Well, probably because he was a huge weight on you that you didn’t even know was on you. And once it was off of you, you were able to be yourself again, but you didn’t even know it”
But also, she said, “I just need you to understand that this is going to be a rollercoaster of emotion and you have to prepare yourself for that rollercoaster”
And she was right because the week after that is when I started feeling depressed.
I didn’t know it was depression, but it was depression.
And so, the point of me saying that today is that as we’re talking about how to grieve, the truth is there is no right way to grieve.
It is something you are going through or have gone through or will go through, but you are gonna have grief.
And you are gonna have to learn how to grieve for you, not how to grieve for your husband, your wife, your kids, your mom, dad, friends.
It’s how to grieve for you because everybody does it differently.
And a lot of times we don’t know how.
We don’t know how we’re gonna be until something happens.
Like I didn’t realize how much I would cry about going through divorce as as much as I did.
But I said to myself, “well, I’m sad I’m gonna cry”
I didn’t realize how angry I was gonna get with him.
It was a weird situation when everything went down.
But I just remember trying to understand why he was doing what he was doing.
That was more so everything.
I kept saying, “Why, why?”
And I tried to get him to talk. And he just would not talk like that at all.
I think that I really felt the height of the depression after I moved to Houston a year later.
But I didn’t know I was depressed and so it looked like a lot of different things for me.
One, it looked like work, because I had to work to take care of myself.
But I was working and working then what it looked like for me is that I am going to be successful.
I’m gonna show him that although I am sad and I am hurting. But I’m okay, that I was hurting or am hurting.
I am also like, “I am gonna show you that I got this without you”
And I did.
That was my way of grieving. I was just like, “I’m gonna go be successful”
But I didn’t know that.
Also what happened was I just started to eat right and I was like eating my feelings.
Food was never a big comfort thing for me. It just never was.
Now when my grandma passed in September of 2021.
Grief for me was shock. I remember when I woke up that morning and I saw the text message and it said, she’s gone.
I just looked at my phone and I said, “I’m not gonna respond to these messages yet. I’m gonna turn this phone over”
And I just laid back in the bed and I just sat there and I was just in shock.
I didn’t cry immediately.
I was in disbelief.
And then when the disbelief kind of wore off, then the tears started to flow.
And then I sent my first message back.
I was angry. I was angry at my mom and her siblings. And I was angry at the people that lived with my grandma and that lived near her. I was angry at all of them.
Because I felt like I was one of the people in my family where I’m like the strength they would glean from or whatever.
And so they weren’t acknowledging that I was probably hurting too, because most people aren’t self-aware.
Then I was distant.
But once I got home from the funeral, I was like, “Okay, what is going on?”
I didn’t have facial paralysis, but I started feeling my face twitching.
So I felt my lip keep twitching and then my face started to twitch.
And then my hands, legs and my feet were getting numb.
And I was just like, “Something is going on. I am highly stressed”.
And so, because I was so self-aware. I was like, “shut it down”
I had speaking engagements that time and I canceled everything and I just shut it all down.
And I enrolled in therapy, right? A different kind of therapy. Because I already had a therapist talking about something else. So I went to betterhelp.com and I said, “okay, I just wanna talk to somebody about my grandma”
And we were talking through that.
And it has been a journey of that but more importantly, during that time I was talking to God.
I don’t care who people are available. I was talking to God and it was like God was able to hear all of my thoughts, all of my feelings.
Because when I had gone through divorce, I didn’t know how to be with people or with God.
I was cursing. I was angry. I mean, I was on a warpath.
Most people would have no idea.
I was doing it all in my journal or to my best friend, but the rest of the world had no idea.
And I was just on a warpath internally and just with my journal and my best friend.
So I learned that God could handle that side of me.
At that time, I was cursing Him. I was so mad but I learned that He could handle that and He could comfort me in that.
I learned that through that process. But then when my grandma passed, I was just like, “okay, I’m not angry in the sense of wanna curse and curse God. I am very emotional and I’m just gonna sit here and I’m gonna be raw. I’m gonna be real in all that as long as it takes”
And I just started to do that.
Now, what tips or advice would I give you about grieving?
Well, it’s gonna be really important that you are self-aware.
And so that means that more than likely you can’t see if you’re not a very self-aware person, you’re gonna have to get a therapist or a counselor.
Your friends can’t be all that for you.
They can be as much as they can, but you need somebody that this is what they do.
This is their skill. They went to school for this. So that this person can help you through the process of your grief.
So they can help you see, they can help you process, they can help you walk through stage one, two, stage three, for whatever that looks like for you.
Because even though your friend may have lost their mom the way that you do, responding to it is different.
So I had some friends of mine who did not understand my grief around my grandma passing away.
And it was because they weren’t that close to their grandparents the way that I was.
And so they thought that it was not that big of a deal until I was mean to them.
And they were like, “what’s going on?”
I’m like, “she was like my mom”
But I had to learn that I was gonna have to articulate myself to people to understand what’s going on with me so that they can understand.
All the people that I had to cancel for speaking engagements, I had to tell them, “Hey, here’s what happened with my grandma. She was like my mother, and here’s how my body is reacting to this. I can’t go to your event because I’m gonna have a breakdown if I go to your event”
So I had to figure out how to articulate that to people.
But thank God that I was self-aware enough and had the words to be able to articulate that.
But you may not have that. So that’s why you may need to go to a therapist so that she or he can give you those tools.
Because if you don’t have them, you’re not gonna say anything.
You’re gonna say or do whatever it is you do, but you really gonna need to get access to tools.
And so I highly recommend that you go through therapy, but also you gotta be talking to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, because they are gonna give you more tools than the therapists can give you.
Four of them together. God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the therapists together are gonna help you so much.
And that is who is helping me with the stuff I’ve gone through in the past.
And then even the current things that I’m going through.
I gotta have surgery over the next month or two. And I thought that God was gonna supernaturally heal me and he hasn’t yet.
And God’s just like, “so here’s his expectation that you had. Here’s what did not happen. And there’s a part of you that’s very angry, very hurt, very disappointed.”
And I was like, “you right” And He goes, “yeah, so let’s talk about it”
And the more that I talk about how I really feel, I felt myself crying and sadness and all that.
And the anger that I didn’t know that I had was starting to kind of break off.
I didn’t really know that all that was in there until having this conversation with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be able to understand what I’m actually feeling versus what I don’t even know that I’m feeling.
You didn’t hear anything that I said today about how to grieve. You’re gonna need help to help you to grieve.
And it’s not just your husband, your wife, your best friend.
They don’t have the tools to help you with that. And as much as you want them or expect them, that’s you. You can’t put that on them.
That’s a lot to put on people who don’t have the tools for that.
They will be there with you and support you but to really grieve in a healthy way for you, your soul, and all that, you really need to get with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and as well as a trained professional.
I don’t have an affiliate for this, but you can go to betterhelp.com and you can probably sign up and get a session.
Or you can go to talktherapy.com and you get a session there as well.
And it’s definitely gonna be extremely beneficial for you because you’re just gonna have somebody to talk through that can listen and that can give you tools as you listen.
So I hope you found this article valuable.
Furthermore, going on a journey with God can prove to be one of the most amazing experiences of your life, but it can also prove to be a little confusing.
And I want to walk alongside you and help you to not only fall more in love with Jesus than you are today, but truly discover all that lies within you.
The bible identifies 25 different spiritual gifts that are still in operation today, and it may be surprising to you, but one or some may also lie within YOU!
We have created this simple quiz that is designed to be a guide for you.
Take the quiz here and be sure to share it with your friends.