Article In Washington Post And Online Discussion

[JoeA]

I want to let everyone know about an article in the Washington Post and an online discussion of the article. The article is about the “discovery” of a biological basis for what the authors call “complicated grief”, which sounds like any grief that doesn’t fit the their idea of “proper” grief. It made me angry, and I submitted an angry question. I anticipate an ice-cold clinical response, but who cares, what the h*** do they know about my grief?

A link to the article can be found at (you have to register but it’s free)

www.washingtonpost.com/science

There is also a link to the online discussion at the same place. The online discussion starts at 11:00 am EDT.

I can also email the article to anyone who would rather not register on the Washington Post web site.

- Joe

[MikeC]

Thanks for the link, Joe. I find the article ridiculous and left a comment myself. I basically stated that prior to Janet's death I had lost both parents and three brothers. I experienced grief in each instance, but nothing even remotely close to what I am experiencing now. I am sure I will be grieving for quite some time to come, so does that mean my brain has changed?

Mike

[JoeA]

Thanks Mike. I'm not even going to tune in on the discussion. Just left my comment. I doubt they could get it even if they tried. As I think I said before, you and I are on similar paths. Take care of yourself.

- Joe

[Guest Vickie O'Neil]

Joe,

Read the article..think it's BS. Another "Drug" to treat the brains of grieving people.equals more profit for the drug companies, the shrinks who diagnose..& all the other "talking Heads" involved like, say the Social Workers.

I am certain that my brain is not getting the seratonin & dopamine that is the feel good place in the brain. I'm sure when I get through it, my brain will be AOK without adding a drug to the Mix. I'll grieve..Thank you vey Much!

Vickie O'Neil

[kayc]

Wow, just shows what an "instant-feel-good" society we are in! Our grief IS "proper"!

[JoeA]

Thanks everyone. I'm glad to know it's not just me. I posted my question and got the BS response I expected. Then they cut me off - I complained about the idiocy of the whole idea - guess I probably got a little out of line ;-) "The editor reserves the right to select the questions most appropriate for the guest", blah blah blah ...

Doesn't it just make you crazy that these people are the "experts"! They don't know from grief!!!

(OK, as Vickie said ealier, rant over)

Peace and Love,

- Joe

[teny]

Hellow JOE Please email the artical for me.Im in counceling and my doctor incist that Im not moving and I have comlicated grief.I did not have acomplicated life it was full of love how easy they can tell what is complicated when you loose you reason to breath?TENY

[Dusky]

Joe,

I went to the Washington post and read this article. I posted the following response on the comment section of the web site. Hopefully it will appear as written without being edited. here is how my response to the article reads:

This article appears to repeat so many of the old fallacies about the grieving process when I see written phrases like “unable to move on,” and when it is states in a negative phrase that someone may be grieving “for months and even years” following a loved ones death. If you have lost someone who you truly love, and especially if you share the same intimate nest with that person, you will continue to grieve for the remainder of your life – not just months and years. What our society is unwilling to recognize is that this is normal. American society does not understand grief. It does not understand how to deal with grief and how to incorporate it into the rest of your life following a loved ones death – or how to watch someone go through the process. A grieving person needs to know that it is “ok” for the grieving process to be a lifetime journey. We are pushed to “move on” by those who have been far less affected by our loss than we have been affected - because those less affected do not want to see us in pain. Pain and tears are part of the process of grief. Grief is experienced in different emotional levels for each person who has suffered a loss.

There is no such thing as something “resembling regular grief” (a phrase used in the article) - it is unique to each individual – there is no right or wrong way to deal with it – and you do not recover by “moving on” or “letting go.” You will find much more peace and recovery by “remembering and recalling” your loved one, incorporating the best qualities of his or her life into your own, and living your life in the present moment.

I speak from experience and not from the coach of a psychiatrist. I am someone who lost his mate of 27 years to a brain tumor three years ago. I recovered by reading, writing, talking about my loss on a grief web site and writing a book. I did not recover by taking medication and believing that my brain was imbalanced or that I had some type of syndrome. Grief is not something you can escape from or medicate away – you have to pass through the pain to transcend grief.

I know what I am speaking about – and I wrote a book about my loss and how to transcend loss. My book “Finding My Banana Bread Man,” and the web site associated with it www.findingmybananabreadman.com ,is a better primer on loss and recovery than anything I am reading in this article.

Respectfully yours

John R. Davis

[mlg]

Let them smoke that in their pipes. Good comment John. Only those of us who have gone through it know what is best. There are some who need more than this website and hopefully they will seek that help, but the people here have helped me more than anything else I have found. Even if you don't post, just reading other's posts help.

Mary Linda

[shhh65]

When my husband died, I was given some advice from a dear cousin who has had so much experience with death in her family that she could be considered an expert. Her one and only child, Samantha was killed in an auto accident shortly after her 18th birthday. She told me this as only advice; she knew I would need to grieve in my own way: "If possible, do not take medication to numb your feelings. I don't know how I could have ever gotten better without feeling the pain."

For me personally, this has worked. I am not saying that no one should take medication. I think that has to be an individual decision with a trusted physician. My own doctor suggested that he did not think I could "get through it" without medication. So far he is wrong.

As others have stated, I keep moving forward by feeling the pain, seeking help from my Lord, family, old friends, new friends I've made at a local grief support group and here online, books, and journaling. Each person must do what they feel is necessary to make this journey. I try not to let people who don't have a clue get to me. As the song goes "I'll cry if I want to!"

Love and praying that everyone is finding some peace in this day,

Sherry

[kayc]

Sherry,

"If possible, do not take medication to numb your feelings. I don't know how I could have ever gotten better without feeling the pain."

I never thought of it like that before, but it makes sense. You have to experience the pain in order to get through it. (I don't think, however, that taking medication keeps someone from feeling the pain so much as making it more cope able, unless someone is over medicated.)

A friend of mine that recently lost her husband, lamented to me about the pain and asked if there was some way to get it to end, and I told her, "No, you just have to go through it, there's no way to circumvent the grieving process, it takes great effort and time to process what you have been hit with." I know that for myself, I worked very hard at it, I made collages depicting my feelings and ones depicting my goals. I wrote, I talked, I cried, I made effort to find joy, however small. I chose positive focus (remembering that it IS a "choice"). I chose life. At first this seemed impossible, but that's why grieving is considered a "process" not an event. It changes, it evolves, and it slowly brings us through to the point where we begin to adjust. I like the word adjust rather than acceptance because acceptance, to the new griever, is almost insulting, it sounds as if it implies we might welcome it, and that is never the case. Of course, in time, we realize it means nothing of the kind, it merely means we have finally adjusted to the new circumstances in which we've found ourselves. To the new griever, many things seem offensive even when not intended that way, I know I was very sensitive to the things people said or the choice of words that were used. It is just a very hard time in life!

Edited August 6, 2008 by kayc

[KathyG]

What bothers me most about that article is the author's assumption that continuing grief is abnormal regardless of the griever's life circumstances. As we know, what's "normal" for anyone differs from one person to the next. It depends on not just how attached you were to the person who lost, but on what else was happening in your life when or immediately before he or she died.

More than a few of us have been struggling with other challenges as we journey through grief (such as a child or sister in trouble). And some of us are also reeling from a chain of disasters -- job losses or illness or the sequential deaths of multiple people important to us -- of which the loss of our spouses is only the latest link. Any one of these developments could sink us, but when we're being battered by several at the same time, it's ridiculous for those who don't know us and what we've been facing to think that each time we're knocked down, we can just pop back up again like inflatable punching bags.

Few if any of us have lives that aren't complicated by things other than our grief. But there's no question that it takes more effort and persistence (and more grief) to recover when a new crisis hits while you're still down.

[kayc]

Kathy,

That's a good point, I had a series of "big things" to deal with in 2005.

end of May '05 Found out my daughter was attacked when she was four and went through the process of finding her a good counselor she could relate to.

end of May '05 Found out my husband had been using Meth and that is what had happened to all our money...took me about two years to process all of the betrayal I felt with that.

06/03/05 My hard drive failed at work and even though I had double sets of back ups, I lost all of the financial info for one company for an entire year and all of the databases/forms/data for the other company for 1/2 year, which I had to reinput and create, working day and night for two weeks.

06/19/05 My husband passed away

A few months later I lost my job

All of this happened within a ten month period, but most of it within one month. It is a lot to handle at once! Sometimes I kick myself for making some mistakes since then, but then I have to realize just what all I've been through and applaud myself for even surviving. There is no handbook that tells us how to handle life when it knocks you for a loop and I think we're all doing well to even be here!

[WendyJ]

Kay that was alot you went through and you know you are right we should all be applauded for being here, not because we lost someone but because we were strong enough to admit we could not do it on our own and we had to seek out help. Sadly enough there are alot of people still out there that do not know there are groups such as this that may need help. Believe me though I tried a couple other groups before this one, none even came close to the love and support this group gives !

Love,

Wendy

[kayc]

Wendy,

I know, I've been on other forums and this one is very special, I think in part due to the people that have joined, and in part due to a very sensitive, educated Monitor! This site has made so much difference to me.

KayC

[AnnC]

I find it so hard to believe that people are still writing things like this article! Is it any wonder that drug abuse is such a problem in this country, when we are encouraged all the time to take prescription drugs if we seem the least bit "abnormal", or if our emotional reactions don't live up to some arbitrary standard of "normal"?

I was lucky -- when my ex-husband/dear friend died, I found the grief uncontrollable and overwhelming. I finally went to a professor who teaches at the college where I work. He is a nationally known expert in the psychology of grief. He immediately told me society has no clue how to deal with grief or grieving people, and he gave me articles he had written on how the media trivializes grief, or says things like, "six months after his child's death, this man is still grieving", as if that were abnormal! He gave me a referral to a grief counseling center. They totally saved me. The counselor told me that everyone is so different in the way that they grieve, and that I should not sorry if my grief takes a long time to soften (she never says grief goes away or is healed, but that over time the pain softens. She lost her son 25 years ago.) She said that I have complicated grief and disenfranchised grief, so it's a lot to work through.

Many of the people in my grief support group were taking antidepressants, but mainly so they could sleep and function. Since I was not caring for children or anyone else, I just let myself not sleep when I was unable to. For a couple of months, I barely slept or ate. But I knew my body would eventually make me sleep and eat, so I decided to just "go with the flow". And eventually, I did start living again. But I cried every day for two years. Then every other day for another year. Now it has passed the four year mark, and I am able to have a happy life much of the time. That is largely due to my belief in the afterlife and afterlife communication -- I see signs from him and I see him in my dreams, and I believe we will be together again one day. But I still have my moments when I break down. I sometimes still think, Shouldn't I be over this by now? But one person said something to me that has really meant a lot -- Do you ever "get over" love? Of course we don't. The loss is now part of my life. Sadness is part of my life. But it no longer defines my life as it did for a long time. To get to this point, it takes as long as it takes.

I remember something that happened -- one time, several months after my ex-husband died, I had such a bad breakdown that I sobbed and screamed uncontrollably, lying on the floor until I threw up. It was frightening. But I actually felt better afterwards. I told my grief counselor about it, and she said, "Did you wail?" I was startled, but then thought about it, and said, "Yes, I guess I did wail." She said, "Good for you!" I was amazed -- I'm sure almost anyone else would have told me I needed drugs immediately, if not a psychiatrist! But the wailing really did help -- I connected to pure raw pain, and realized that I could survive it.

And now, four plus years after his death, it is a great comfort to be able to come to this site and read and post, and not feel weird that I'm "not over it".

Ann

[JoeA]

Wow. Thanks everyone. This article really hit a nerve - no pun intended. Unfortunately the Washington Post edited some of the feedback - I don't see Dusky's response in the archive at all. I plan to follow up with a letter to the editor.

Peace to all,

- Joe

[Dusky]

Joe A,

If you go to the comments section via the same link that you had provided here originally you will find my response - they did not delete it or edit it for that matter. I also sent a separate e-mail to the author of the article (Ron Stein if I remember correctly) but I have not received any response from him.

And just a short comment - this is the most wonderful and interactive grief support group that I know of. Thank you Marty - and thank each of you for your well thought out responses.

Each of you has certainly made a difference in transversing this process for me.

Many thanks,

John - Dusky is my handle on here

love you Jack

[mlg]

You know the old saying,"Better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all". I think that saying is so true whether it be a spouse, parent, child, sibling, friend or pet. Without love in our lives where would any of us be? We are now developing a kind of "love" for each and every person that posts here.

So to all those people who think we should get over it, ask them if they've ever lost something they love. If they haven't tell them you're happy for them but someday they'll unfortunately know what you are going through. Until then they just need to let us grieve the way we need to.

Mary Linda

[Maylissa]

To all of you here and your responses during this discussion -- Here, here!!!"

It was just what I needed to see, coming up to the 2 Year mark of my hardest loss. Thanks to all of you for seeing past the trumped-up nonsense of this article (which I haven't even read, but can WELL imagine...more drug-pushing and minimizing...ugh!) and making FAR more sense than certain 'experts' ever do!

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.

[JeanneC]

The other day one of my co-workers asked me how I was doing. I told her I was miserable. She said: "you're miserable?". And I said that I might look like I am happy and laughing and talking OK, but I am definitely miserable. She told me not to be miserable. I asked how do you go about doing that. I would like to know. She looked at me with this face. Well she said go out, have a good time. So, going out and "trying" to have a good time is suppose to stop my misery. I felt like telling her, have you ever lost anybody that was close to you. But I said, let me keep my mouth shut. Some people are just ignorant.

I am so happy that I have found all of you that have become my friends and truly understand what I am going through. It gives me some real comfort.

Love and God Bless

Jeanne

[JeanneC]

Hi Everyone:

I posted the previous post. I should have put it under another topic. I guess everybody is saying - what is she talkin about.

Sorry about that.

Love and God Bless

Jeanne

[MikeC]

Jeanne,

It may not belong in this thread, but your co-worker's comment is something I am sure we have all heard. It is hard to hold your tongue when you get advice like that.

Now, if you had told her "I have complicated grief, so going out and having a good time won't help" then the post would have fit perfectly here.

Mike

[firefly]

I just found this subject. I found the response to be extremely touching. Thank you everyone for your thoughts. Yes that phrase moving on...and letting go. I didn't like it back when Levi died. and I don't like it now two years later. I will never move on or let go of my Levi...not of his smile, not of his eyes, not of his laughter, not of his dreams, not of his protectiveness, not of the life he never got to live. No he lived. I feel it would be robbing him of the life he had to just say oh well...guess I'll just "let that go" guess I'll just move on...because it wasn't really that important any way. How stupid. My biggest break through was realizing yes...I have to just go through this pain...I can't just ignore it, hide it, or minimize it or call it something else! I have to grieve. Thanks again guys.

love,

Anna

[Russell]

Joe,

could you please e-mail it to me. Here is my e-mail address:wentzloff@aol.com

Thanks,

Russell