Write On!

              Following this period of intense emotions you often enter a time of
detachment. You pull away from those around you and resist getting involved
in new opportunities and experiences. When there is a choice of being with
others or alone, you will usually choose to be alone. Accepting the death of
another is, in itself, difficult but you are also facing the growing awareness of
your own mortality and the temporary nature of all relationships. You may fear
getting close to another as their loss would cause more pain, and your
subconscious draws away from others to protect yourself. New experiences
are frightening, especially alone. Lifestyle, friends and activities have all
changed due to your loss. You fear how others will react, with too much
sympathy or too little. You are going through a personal crisis in terms of
redefining yourself in the eyes of yourself and others. It is natural to want to be
alone, if, however, you shut yourself off from everyone, you deprive yourself of
the support you need to give your life meaning. Hiding away will slow the
process of making a new life for yourself. The trick is to find a balance
between time alone and involvement with those who care. Sometimes you
must push yourself to become involved. Start small; small groups, familiar
places, ' baby steps'.
Eventually you will begin to recover. There is no set time, in fact a
couple years is not unusual. Recovery is a reinvestment in life, new and old
relationships, and in your future. It doesn't mean forgetting the person who
died and the pain you have felt. Rather, it means incorporating that loss and
pain into your life and becoming a whole person again, better and stronger for
having survived the experience. Recovery comes in many forms. It may mean
taking on new challenges. You may realize that during your grief, you have
been putting things off, not really living your life or planning your future. As you
recover, you will find the strength to carry on, making necessary changes and
plans to fulfill your life. During this period you will discover that you can think
of the person as not just dead, but as the loving and fun person they were
when alive. You may remember certain times together and actually laugh
about it. Good memories of their life will at least equal the sad memories of
their death and, eventually, may even be more prominent in your memory. For
the rest of your life, recovery is an on- going process. You will never forget, but
each day will be easier; life will continue and new interests will happen.
By being aware of these stages of grief, you will not be frightened by
them. However, don't try to fit your personal grief into any particular pattern.
These are just a guideline. In your case they may not all occur, they may not
occur in the precise sequence indicated in this article, they may occur in less
or more intensity, they may keep switching back and forth and/ or occur
simultaneously. All these scenarios are ' normal'. However you feel at any
specific time is how you should feel.
As you experience grief and all it's ramifications, in the beginning it
may seem that you will never survive this loss. Grief affects you emotionally
and physically. Through years of meeting and talking to people in different
phases of the grief process, Victims' Services Advocates have gathered some
ideas for coping and amassed them in a training manual. Some of their
comments and strategies are incorporated in the section that follows.