Question from a reader: I recently tried to join a grief group. When the leader found out that my wife had not died, she told me that the others in the group would not feel that my grief was as deep as theirs. She suggested that I look for a divorce-recovery group. I wish I was certain that recovery will eventually happen. It has been over 17 years since I lost my wife. Isn’t it pretty clear by now that I will not ever recover?
Marty Tousley, RN, MS, FT, DCC, responds: I’m so sorry to learn that you were met with such insensitivity from a support group leader. I also think your story illustrates the importance of the language we choose to use when speaking about grief.
First, it is pointless to compare one person’s loss with another’s, or to argue whether one type of loss is “deeper” than another kind. Better to say that the grief associated with divorce is different from the grief experienced when a spouse dies, but it is still a death – the death of a relationship – and it still engenders grief.
As I wrote in my book, Finding Your Way through Grief: A Guide for the First Year, Second Edition: Regardless of its source, the worst kind of grief is the grief you’re experiencing now. Don’t compare your grief with anyone else’s, and know that, at this moment, your loss is the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Acknowledge that your loss is worthy of grief. Where there is loss, there is grief. Pain is pain. Accept that you must endure the very real feelings of sorrow.
If “recovery” from your loss is what you seek, you’re quite right that you “will not ever recover,” because most of us understand “recovery” as returning to some state of normalcy, of going back to life the way it was before the loss occurred. When your divorce happened, the life you knew was lost, and you are forever changed. Better to say that eventually, with lots of hard work, understanding, and support, you will become reconciled to your loss.
Perhaps the most commonly asked question in coping with loss and transition is, “When is grieving finished?” While the agonizing pain of loss diminishes in intensity over time, it’s never gone completely. Whether through death or divorce, depending upon your relationship with and attachment to the one you have lost, it can be absolutely normal to feel the aftershock of loss for the rest of your life.
Grieving is not a reaction to a single event, like an illness that can be cured and from which you will recover. It’s more like a deep wound that eventually heals and closes, but whose terrible scar remains and still can hurt at times. For some, it’s like an amputation, in that part of one’s very self is lost when a relationship or a loved one dies. You wouldn’t think of asking an amputee, “How long does it take to get over losing your left leg?” You never “get over” the loss of a loved one — over time and with effort, you simply learn to live with it, eventually adjusting to the physical absence of the one you have lost.
Whenever there is a loss of something important in our lives, we suffer grief, and grieving is a normal part of the divorce / breaking-up process.
Usually for a death there is a set ritual with a funeral or memorial service, and some understanding in our culture that mourning is important. But for the death of a love relationship, there is no prescribed ritual of mourning, and the grief that accompanies divorce is seldom acknowledged or accepted.
When a relationship dies, oftentimes there is an injury to one’s own ego, a sense of failure and a diminished sense of self-worth. There are nagging questions about what went wrong and many fears about the future. In order to get yourself into a position to enjoy life again, it’s important to learn whatever lessons these experiences have to teach you, to get to know yourself better and to develop new parts of yourself that you did not know were there before.
If you haven’t already done so, I invite you to visit the Death of a Relationship page of my Grief Healing Web site. There you will find links to many articles and books that are relevant to what you are experiencing, including how to find a divorce support group.
I hope this information proves helpful to you, my friend, and I wish you all the best as you continue your life journey.
© by Marty Tousley, RN, MS, FT, DCC
Reach Marty through her Web sites, http://www.griefhealing.com and http://www.griefhealingdiscussiongroups.com. She blogs weekly at Grief Healing and can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest.
Tags: grief, hope
I lost my only sister a year ago and am still grieving. I was divorced ten years ago, when my husband of 15 years left me for another woman.
I understand that both are huge losses. When my marriage ended, I felt like my guts had been ripped out; it was excruciating.
It was nothing compared to the absolute finality of losing my sister.
For some reason, I had more of a sense with the divorce that I could choose how I would deal with it. I did attend Divorce Recovery and it was incredibly helpful in understanding the emotions and process of separating oneself from a relationship and moving on. It didn’t eliminate my grief, but I would say that it empowered me to not be a victim of my exhusband’s choices. That was something that takes both time and effort.
In both of these losses, I think the key for me is realizing that while I may never be the same person I was before, I can and will recover. HOW I handle that process is a choice I make – daily.
The reader writes: I wish I was certain that recovery will eventually happen. In my experience, recovery doesn’t happen unless you believe it will. That means defining for myself what I mean by recovery and how I believe it will happen. It means being willing to believe. I would think the question the reader might want to look into is: why is he/she not willing to believe recovery is possible?
It’s a loss, yes. But as in the case of losing a limb, how disabled and permanently “scarred” a person is often has a lot more to do with attitude and self-limiting beliefs than with the physical reality.
That’s what I have learned from these and other losses in my life.
Dear Marty and Judy,
I got divorced in 2003 and my whole world as I had known it for 34 years ended. Your life totally changes. I no longer was the same person and had to grieve. I’m still grieving.
In 2007, my 35 year old son passed away. I went into shock and moved around like a robot, barely surviving.
To say that I have been grieving for the past two and a-half years is an understatement.
I wake up in the morning without the desire to do things. I’ve lost hope and enthusiasm for living myself. The thing that keeps me going, if you can existing is “going,” is that I have another son and two grandsons. They moved nearby in order to be closer.
Divorce is like a death…it is final. Death is final, of course. I am having a very hard time.
I have tried, Judy, to change my attitude and believe in “recovery” but the wound is always there and flares up and stabs me in the heart. When I hear a song on the radio that my son loved, for example, I am in actual physical pain….I miss him so much.
Arlene