#Im so lonely i want to due how to
Coping at the holidays, how to deal with residual anger and guilt…and for some time we talked about how much the grievers we met needed the topic of loneliness to be addressed. In helping the population of grievers we serve, my colleague and I have often tried to offer programs and education on a variety of topics related to grief. It could be the griever who lost the parent, the one person who gave them unconditional love, who will never feel the fulfillment and wholeness the relationship with their parent gave them. Or maybe it’s the parent who lost a child, feeling forever lonely around other parents, and forever left out of the things they won’t get to share with their child who should still be here. Perhaps it’s the very acute and tangible loneliness a person experiences coming home to the empty house they used to share with a spouse. What’s strange about this point in time, this plateau, is that there feels like there’s so few resources left to deal with it.Īfter a certain amount of time has passed since the loss of a loved one, what is there left to say that hasn’t been said? When there is “acceptance” and the reality of what can’t be changed sets in, what is there left to do with the loneliness that remains? And as the time goes by and they return each month they demonstrate to themselves and those around them that somehow (and often they don’t even know how) they’ve made it through.Įventually for these grievers it seems a plateau is reached where one can expect that they are not going to get much worse or much better. So many grievers come into their first meeting feeling lost, hopeless, sharing with those in the circle, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it through this”. One time a month, for several months in a row, can be just enough to create an almost time-lapsed photography of loss…where it seems the the changes are occurring both quickly and slowly at the same time. It’s the point where the grief takes on a new form.Īs a facilitator of bereavement groups I’ve been in the unique position of seeing people as they shape-shift through their grief. It’s the feeling when the sadness feels well-worn and exhausted, and the well of tears has run dry. Yet, as the stages of grief suggest, there are commonalities found amongst grievers and if I were to add one final stage, I would add loneliness to the list.īecause even if “acceptance” is reached at some point, there is a lingering and long lasting side effect of loss…loneliness. Grief is too individual and too different from one person to the next.
These days, experts in the field of grief and loss hesitate to offer anything that resembles a timeline for fear that it creates unrealistic expectations for how a griever “should” cope.
The 5 Stages of Grief (as originally established by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross) may be one of the most widely sited tools of grief- it’s also one of the more misunderstood and questioned.
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