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Are You Putting Off Your Grief? That Might Be a Good Thing
It’s not always a great time to grieve—and that’s okay.
Take a look at any popular grief support article and you’ll see advice like, “Work on your grief now!” “Join a support group!” and “Start your healing today!”
While I don’t outright disagree with these instructions, I do know—from personal and professional experience—that it’s not always a great time to grieve.
Doing the work of deep grieving is energetically and emotionally taxing, and sometimes (especially right now as COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc worldwide) it’s just not humanly possible.
Last year, I worked with a client I’ll call Maureen who came to me after seven years of nonstop losses including her mother, her job, her faith, and her health in the form of a frightening cancer diagnosis and multiple surgeries. She was exhausted and to top it all off, she kicked off our first session by shaming herself for not grieving sooner.
“I don’t understand why it’s taken me so long to address this,” she said. “I’ve known I needed to grieve for a while now. I just kept putting it off.”
