Throughout my years studying, teaching, lecturing, writing, and
counseling in the areas of dying, death, and the grieving process,
not only as a rabbi, but in the inter-faith community and as
a certified Grief Recovery Specialist, I have come to this one
startlingly simple conclusion that I call Glazer’s Only
Law of Life: We only learn from how we respond to loss.
Grief, therefore, can be a dynamic opportunity
to learn and to grow.
Throughout our loss-related learning experiences, we always
ask: How do we recover from our losses? Not forget them, but
recover
from them?
The answer lies in how we respond to loss. Are we beaten by
it, or do we grow from it and learn to transcend it?
Every person grieves differently. And
one person can grieve different losses
differently, depending upon an almost infinite
number
of variables that stem from a few basic circumstances: what
they lost, whom they lost and how it happened.
The loss of relationship is what we really cry about. We
mourn not just the past, but also a future that will no longer
include
the person we mourn.
Let the healing begin.
Each chapter of this book begins with
the Old Testament story that illustrates
that chapter’s theme.
In the rest of Part One’s chapters, we’ll look at
core grief topics that help you understand loss and healing:
· Bargaining & Prayer (Jonah)
· Death is Part of Life (Ecclesiastes)
· Tragedy (Lamentations)
· Grief Without Death (The Song of Songs)
In Part Two’s chapters, we’ll look at the common
themes that people encounter on their healing Journey through
grief:
· Shock & Anger (Leviticus)
· Ritual (Second Chronicles)
· Fear (Exodus)
· Wandering & Healing (Numbers)
· Faith & Strength (Job)
· Forgiveness (Genesis)
These are presented in the order we typically experience them,
though, of course, we can also deal with these
themes not only out of order, but simultaneously. Nothing about
the grieving and healing process is written in stone.
In Part Three’s chapters, we move “from mourning
to morning” on our grief recovery path:
· Joy (Proverbs)
· Growth & Wisdom (Psalms)
· Legacy (Deuteronomy)
· The Future: Creating New Relationships & Creating
a New Family (Ruth)
And in the Epilogue, we reflect on a
surprising twist we often encounter
even when we think we’ve got everything all figured
out.
Although experts have documented the
process with official stages of grief,
everyone who
grieves knows that it’s often just
a free-for-all. Taking all of this into account, we can safely
say that there are only four major steps in the grieving process,
as ridiculously simple as they may appear:
1) Grief
2) Coping with Grief
3) False Grief Recovery Actions (When we
think we’ve let
go, but we haven’t.)
4) Letting Go of Grief
How do you know you’ve completed this four-step process,
that you’re okay?
When you’ve created a “new normal.”
When life is no longer upside down: when
you no longer feel that the dead are
alive and
you’re dead.
When you finally let go and lay them
gently down, knowing that God created
everything…And God created hope.
And
God Created Hope for Me Too ~~~~~~ When
We Can't Lay Them Gently Down
