Grief

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is a ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.” Victor Frankl, Mans Search for Meaning, 3d ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984).

Grief is a subject that is often avoided and misunderstood by our culture. The term “grief” is often only used to express the emotional process gone through as a result of death. However there are many losses in life that create grief. 

The following is a partial list of common life occurrences that result in grief:

• Parental loss through addictions
• Separation and divorce
• History of abuse
• Major psychological or physical disease
• Job loss or retirement
• Relocation
• Death
• Abortion

Our society avoids grief and seldom offers long term support and understanding for those going through “bereavement.” People seldom talk about loss and literature often relegates grief to stages in order to keep the suffering of loss clinical and hidden. All of us experience grief in our lives and this grief accumulates the longer that we live. We must learn how to walk through grief and live with the aftermath of our loss. Forget the stages of grief that we have been taught. Grief is an emotional process that can be random and often confusing. Grief changes our life forever.

My counseling approach to grief and loss is the result of both a personal and professional journey. From the loss of my wife through first a traumatic brain injury and then a terminal illness, I have walked my road of grief and loss. My approach uses compassion, understanding and practical experiential counseling techniques to face and progress through your individual process of grief.

Whatever the future is, it will, and must, include the pain of the past with it. Sorrow never entirely leaves the soul of those who have suffered a severe loss. Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995).