How To Accept A Loss: Reflections To Overcome It

Last month, in just two weeks, I had the opportunity to accompany three people in their respective moments of serious vital crises. My daughter’s violin teacher, whom she greatly appreciates, suddenly had to move to another city and she will no longer be able to take classes from him; a friend lost her mother after two years of fighting cancer and, thirdly, a girl who came to my office, after 25 years of marriage, took the step of separating from her husband.

These three people will have to go through a grieving process to overcome their personal crises, a time in their lives marked by the conscious or unconscious search for acceptance of this new situation.

Turning points and duels

The above situations are very different from each other, but they all have a common denominator: each of these people has suffered a very important loss in their life trajectory, a break in their continuum that marks an undeniable before and after in their life.

The differences between them also show that the feeling of grief extends far beyond the death of a loved one. We can mourn when we suffer the absence of a person in our life (even if they continue to live) or even when faced with a new situation or a loss of status.

All stages of grief are necessary

Grief is a physical and emotional journey, a process that everyone must go through more than once throughout their lives in order to rebuild and adapt to each of the new life circumstances.

Any type of grief, regardless of the situation that caused it, goes through the five stages that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross listed at the
end of the 1960s: denial, anger, negotiation, depression, acceptance.

However, grief is not a linear process: its stages can overlap and mix. Sometimes a person can remain anchored in one of these phases and, if they do not advance on that path, they may feel unable to overcome the loss.

Perhaps the main obstacle that we all have to overcome when suffering a loss of any kind is to learn not to get stuck in the initial suffering ; although sometimes the pain does not appear immediately, so that the grief begins in its denial stage and does not advance – you do not walk to accept this reality and face it – so the pain can be submerged and appear later .

Regardless of the order and the way in which we overcome these phases, in order to emerge renewed into the new life that opens after the crisis caused by the loss, it is essential to go through them and overcome them all.

How to manage the pain of an absence

When loss occurs, the pain is intense, excruciating, physical, and emotional. Everything that reminds us of the breakup makes us suffer. Learning to transform this extremely intense suffering into a pain that we can accept, handle and with which we can live, is essential to go through a healthy grief.

It is not convenient for us to anchor ourselves in suffering, but neither to deny pain.

To achieve this, we need, in addition to time –different for each person–, to immerse ourselves in our pain, not reject it (ignore it as if nothing had happened) or tie ourselves to its most incapacitating version (the suffering we have already talked about). If we deepen our sorrow, if we allow ourselves to live it, mourn it and when we are ready, understand what happened, we will be able to assimilate our new circumstances, accept them and face life with renewed enthusiasm. We can start again, get out of our emotional paralysis and develop new life plans.

Turning the page is not forgetting

Once assimilated and accepted, the pain of loss will always remain with us, surely it will accompany us for life. However, it will not be a paralyzing or incapacitating pain, it will be one that reminds us of a version of ourselves from the past, a variant of ourselves that suffered, learned from the crisis and knew how to come out of it with renewed strength.

When we remember our loved one, we will feel sorry, but we will no longer suffer and we will be able to recall our time together from a new perspective. When we remember that wonderful teacher, we will not mourn his absence, but we will play the pieces that he taught us using
his techniques. When we remember the time with our ex-husband, we can congratulate ourselves for having had the strength to overcome this significant stage of our lives.

A new beginning

Life involves continuous transformation. Losing a loved one, a job, a partner, a serious illness, is very painful, but if we give ourselves the necessary time, we can come to assimilate, understand and accept our loss. And we will be ready for life again.

Griefs show us that life carries pain, sadness, and deep sorrow, that we do not have to shy away from these emotions and sensations, no matter how painful they are.

Reflections that help to overcome it

1. Change is part of life.

“Everything changes, nothing remains” said Heraclitus. Accepting that there will always be losses in life, that we cannot control everything, helps us cope with life’s vicissitudes with less suffering. The pain will be there but it will not take us by surprise, since we will know of its existence. Pain, then, does not become an enemy, but an old acquaintance that must not be fought but accepted and understood.

2. Pain can be with us.

Always living conditioned by the pain of the past or by the fear of possible suffering in the future does not help. If we focus on our present life, we will enjoy, day by day, what we have. Let us flow through all the experiences that life offers us. Pain, sadness, anger … are also part of our reality. If we accept them, their presence in our lives will not be marked by rejection.

3. We have the right to be sad.

Denying pain does not help us restore balance. Nor do we lengthen our suffering for our loss. Giving ourselves permission to immerse ourselves in pain and express all our emotions will allow us to experience grief and its phases. Let us not deny ourselves the vital necessity of getting through crises. To overcome
a grief and direct our life towards a new direction, first we have to assimilate, understand and accept what happened.

4. Each duel is a different journey.

All loss entails rupture, suffering, pain and needs the time of mourning to be assimilated and understood. There is no great or small loss, the pain cannot be measured. Sadness is a personal and subjective experience and no one can feel and understand its intensity in the same way. External opinions about suffering – based on judgment and even prejudice – add nothing but more discomfort.

5. All losses count.

We do not only grieve for the death of a loved one. That something that is important to us disappears from our life (our pets, a job, a partner, a friendship …) can lead us to go through a true grieving process that, to be overcome, has to be accepted and lived . Expressing our pain and understanding its meaning will help us cope with our loss.

6. We can learn in this way.

Children also face grieving processes in their lives. In these circumstances, the attitude of the parents must be exquisite. Far from being dramatic, we have to talk to them naturally about losses and changes as part of life. Of course, we must show our pain and talk about it, but trying to make them see that in life all emotions and feelings have their reason for being.