Growing Through Grief

Grief is a process that is transformative in every way. Grieving individuals experience countless losses, but at the same time can also find that they have gained new strengths and increased awareness. The following are some of the ways that people can recognize how they grow through grief.

  • A New Way of Facing Fears – Often having gone through one’s worst fears, subsequent events are viewed from a new perspective. This new way of viewing life can often feel like a new freedom.
  • Gain Psychological Flexibility – When we go through the grief process we experience a depth of feelings often unknown before. This opens us up to being able to manage feelings in a new way.
  • Build Resilience The grieving process can teach us to be more adaptable and flexible because we have to make constant adjustments.
  • Learn Self Expression – When grieving we are often challenged to express ourselves for our very survival and thus invent new ways.
  • Reduce Death Anxiety – Bereaved individuals have the opportunity to work through the trauma & fear of death and often find it is no longer “the unknown” and therefore less frightening. Also, individuals fear less their own death.
  • Continue Bonds with the Beloved – Part of the grieving process is the transformation of the external relationship with the beloved to the internal relationship that we hold inside forever.
  • Opening the Heart – Deepening Relationships – During the grieving process priorities shift; we shed things that lose their meaning and we hold more valuable the things that count. This helps us to open our hearts, as broken as they feel ,and deepen our love for others.
  • Develop Deeper Empathy & Humility – Often grieving individuals can develop a deeper understanding and empathy for others because of their own vulnerability.
  • Learning of Forgiveness – Forgiveness can often come out of the work of grief and out of the reprioritizing process.
  • Weaving of Pain Into Our Life Story – Each loss becomes part of the fabric of our lives.
  • Enhanced Sense of Self – We can come to admire our own resilience.
  • Establish New Priorities – With every loss there is change, and in adjusting to change, there is a shifting in priorities.
  • Set New Direction – Loss changes us forever, we are inevitably spun in new directions.
  • Deepening Appreciation & Gratitude – In accepting the reality of our loss, we can also recognize what we do have in our lives with appreciation.
  • Develop Wisdom – a loss is a life altering experience, it is inevitable that one will gain new wisdom.