Grief Busting is a special on Meanderings with Trudy where we’ll look at the myths around grief and bereavement. These unscripted conversations are like a dance: we jump around the topic of grief and bereavement in service of deepening our understanding, and our connection to joy.
This is our fourth episode in this “Grief Busting” series with special guest and expert on grief and bereavement, Dina Bell-Laroche. You’ll remember Dina from her chat with me back in November, 2022.
Today we meander all around myths relating what is grieve-able. We start with a very tender topic of miscarriage and still-birth of children and how we grieve these losses. Dina makes a critical distinction for us: that grief is an internal reorientation of our inner world after a severed attachment; mourning is when we make the grief public. When a child is conceived but lost, we don’t always know how to grieve this loss, or to mourn it. And yet, like so many tender griefs we experience through life, we need to give the loss it’s due so that we can work with it and embody the experience in a healthy way. This leads us to the rituals that helps us experience such life-altering losses, rituals like funerals, and continuing bonds. The work of grieving is all about reconciling the loss into the meaning we make of our lives.
Grief experiences ripple out and land in the hearts of others, creating opportunities for grief in that person. In this way, grief is deeply intrenched in our relationships.
In our meander, we go on to explore other kinds of things that we commonly grieve, and in this way, I hope, show that anything that causes a sense of loss is grieve-able. That really is our main message here – if it hurts your heart, it’s a loss that needs to be tended to. Losses are big and small, but all are worthy of attention and reconciliation, whatever that may look like for you. And also, there is no hierarchy to grief and our feelings of loss… a loss is a loss, and we all feel them deeply.
I hope you enjoy this episode, the fourth of five episodes in our deep dive into grief, exploring how dealing with our grief can deepen our joy.
Episode Links:
Dina’s company is Grief Unleashed
Dina’s blog post outlining her 25 myths about grief, that we are exploring in these meanders
Francis Weller and the Five Gates of Grief
Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass”
John Roedel, “Upon Departure”
Royalty free music is called Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma
Please send thoughts and comments to meanderingswithtrudy@gmail.com