TNEEL-NE
Theoretical Perspectives
Learning Activities
Compiled by Jinny Tesiik, M.A., Bereavement Counselor. Used with permission
Activity 2: The Creative Expressions and Descriptions of Grief and Loss
Directions: The sayings are separated with dashed lines. To prepare for the in-class activity, print the pages and cut on the dashed lines to separate each saying.
Saying 1: Edgar N. Jackson “You and Your Grief”GRIEF is...
Grief is the intense emotion that floods life when a person’s inner security system is shattered by an acute loss, usually associated with the death of someone important in his/her life.
In more personal terms, grief is a young widow who must find a way to bring up her three children, alone. Grief is the angry reaction of a man so filled with shocked uncertainty and confusion that he strikes out at the nearest person. Grief is the little old lady who goes to the funeral of a stranger and does some unfinished business of her own feelings by crying her eyes out there; she is weeping for herself, for the event she is sure will come, and for which she has so little help in preparing herself.
Grief is a mother walking daily to a nearby cemetery to stand quietly alone for a few moments before she goes on about the tasks of the day; she knows that part of her is in the cemetery, just as part of her is in her daily work. Grief is the deep sympathy one person has for another when he wants to do all he can to help resolve a tragic experience. Grief is the silent, knifelike terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day, when you start to speak to someone who is no longer there.
Grief is the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after eating with another for years. Grief is the desperate longing for another whose loss you cannot learn to endure. Grief is teaching yourself how to go to bed without saying good night to the one who has died. Grief is the helpless wishing that things were different when you know they are not and never will be again. Grief is a whole cluster of adjustments, apprehensions that strike life in its forward progress and make it difficult to reorganize and redirect the energies of life.
Grief is always more than sorrow. Bereavement is the event in personal history that triggers the emotion of grief Mourning is the process by which the powerful emotion is slowly and painfully brought under control. But when doctors speak of grief they are focusing on the raw feelings that are at the center of a whole process that engages the person in adjusting to changed circumstances. They are speaking of the deep fears of the mourner, of his prospects of loneliness, and of the obstacles he must face as he finds a new way of living.
Saying 2: Larry Anderson, Seattle P.I. Columnist
“There is a terrible craving. Insatiable, never ending. It’s like that that feeling of being hungry for something but not knowing what it is. But this is deeper, more pervasive, more elusive. But I think I know what it is, it’s a craving for Margaret”
Saying 3: C.S. Lewis, “A Grief Observed”
“Grief and pain are the price we humans have to pay for the love and total commitment we have for another person. The more we love, the more we are hurt when we lose the object of our love. But if we are honest with ourselves, would we have it any other way?”
Saying 4: Author unknown
The agony is so great
And yet I will stand it.
Had I not loved so very much
I would not hurt so much.
But goodness knows, I will not
Want to diminish that precious love
By one fraction of an ounce.
I will hurt, and I will be grateful to the hurt
For it bears witness to
The depth of our meanings.
And for that I will be
eternally grateful.
Saying 5: William A Miller “When Going to Pieces Holds You Together”
“Grief is an integral part of the process and experience of life. No human being exists who is immune to loss and the resultant dynamics of grief. As a matter of fact, to a lesser or greater degree, loss and grief are virtually an every-day occurrence for most of us.”
Saying 6: Nina Petrulius - grief counselor
“The grief process is a rite of passage. It is a time to bid farewell to the past and open oneself to the coming future. It helps us to let go of what is no longer with us, to come to terms with what was and more on.”
Saying 7: Stephen Levine “Who Dies”
“We are all in grief. All have experienced loss. Even if your loved ones are still alive, there is a place within of disappointment and loss because we live in a world where everything changes.”
Saying 8: David Whyte, “The Well of Grief”
THE WELL OF GRIEF
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
Will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret Water, cold and clear
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished
for something else.
Saying 9: Scott Peck, “People of the Lie”
“It is often the most spiritually healthy and advanced among us who are called on to suffer in ways more agonizing than anything experienced by the more ordinary… Conversely, it is the unwillingness to suffer emotional pain that lies at the very root of emotional illness. Those who fully experience depression, doubt, confusion, and despair may be infinitely more healthy than those who are generally certain, complacent, and self-satisfied. The denial of suffering is, in fact, a better definition of illness than its acceptance.”
Saying 10: Washington Irving
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
Saying 11: Howard Thurman “Meditations of the Heart”
I share with you the agony of your grief,
The anguish of your heart finds echo in my own.
I know I cannot enter all you feel
Nor bear with you the burden of your pain;
I can but offer what my love does give:
The strength of caring,
The warmth of one who seeks to understand
The silent storm-swept barrenness of so great a loss.
This I do in quiet ways,
That on your lonely path
You may not walk alone.
Saying 12: Eda LeShan, “On Living Your Life”
“When someone dies whom I love, I allow my grief all the room it needs. Great waves of pain wash over me. When it subsides, I don’t try to shut it off. After a while the sharpest anguish softens, the waves of pain occur less frequently, and I go on with my life, never trying to deny the terrible hole left in my universe by my loss. Through this process of mourning, all the good memories begin to flow back and fill my life, and finally I find I’m a better person, doing more good in the world because the loved one is now a part of me.”
Saying 13: Renee 'Duvall
“If I could bear the burden of your sorrow, I would.
If I could, but for a minute, take away your pain and make it mine, I would.
If I could tell you “there’s a reason for this”, I would.
I can’t tell you how sorry I am that your life has been interrupted this way, how sorry I am that I can’t shelter you from this.
But I want you to know I’m here if you want to talk, if you need to cry, if you can find comfort in sharing silence with me.
I care.”
Saying 14: Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
“I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action.”
“What we would all like is the happy past restored. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
But a spiral, am I going up or down? How often--will it be for always? How often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realize my loss till this moment?”
“No one told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.”
“Sorrow turns out to be not a state but a process. There is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.
Not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn’t a circular trench.”
Saying 15: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “Gift from the Sea”
“One learns to accept the fact that no permanent return is possible to an old form of relationship; more deeply still, that there is no holding of a relationship to a single form. This is not tragedy but part of the ever-recurrent miracle of life and growth. All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms.”
Saying 16: Ruth Bender “Book of Qualities”
GRIEF
Before she came to this town Grief was a woman named Eliea. She was a potter, and she glazed her big-bellied pots with earth colors until they shone like dull bronze. She had four children. The daughters live inland now in the distant foothills, and the oldest son left the family as soon as he could get away. It was the young boy with the golden curls and the laughing eyes who gave her great joy. He loved the ocean. He was barely walking when he learned to swim and not much older when he started to sail. One day about two years ago the sailors brought his boat home empty.
Never have I heard such sounds of weeping as when Grief found out her son had drowned. She screamed and howled. She stamped her feet and smashed her pots and bowls. She ate with all her fingers. She tore at her hair, and it grew wild and matted. She wandered from place to place with no sense of where she was or how she came there.
One day Grief heard another woman cry out. She spoke with her. She listened to her story. Grief was surprised. She had never met anyone else who had suffered as she had. Together the women mourned their children, they wept and wept and wept and wept. In the morning Grief was washed clean of her tears. She came to our town and started to do her real work.
Saying 17: J. Ruth Gendler, “The Book of Qualities”
SUFFERING
Suffering teaches philosophy on a part-time basis. She likes the icy days in February when she can stay home from school, make thick soups, and catch up on her reading. With her white skin and dark hair she even looks like winter. She has a slender face and dramatic cheekbones. Suffering’s reputation troubles her. Certain people adore her and talk about her as if knowing her gives them a special status. Other people despise her. When they see her across the aisle at the supermarket they look the other way. Even though Suffering is considered a formidable instructor, she is actually quite compassionate. She feels lonely around students who dislike her. It is even more painful to be around those who idealize her. She is proud only because she recognizes the value of her lessons.
Saying 18: Chinese Proverb
“You can’t prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair.”
Saying 19: Angelo Patri
“In one sense there is no death. The life of a soul on earth lasts beyond his departure. You will always feel that life touching yours, that voice speaking to you, that spirit looking out of other eyes, talking to you in the familiar things he/she touched, worked with, loved as familiar friends. He/She lives on in your life and in the lives of all others who know him/her.”
Saying 20: Doug Manning in “Don’t Take My Grief Away”
“A cut finger is numb before it bleeds, it bleeds before it hurts, it hurts until it begins to heal, it forms a scab and then a scar where the wound once was. Grief is the deepest wound you have ever had. Like the cut finger, it goes through stages and leaves a scar.”
Saying 21: Anonymous
It was only a kindly word
And a word that was lightly spoken
Yet not in vain, for it stilled the pain
Of a heart that was nearly broken.
Saying 22: Anonymous
“In your heart, you probably realize that in time the sadness you are feeling will fade. But for now, it’s all right to hurt and I hurt with you.. It’s all right to cry, and I share your tears. So allow yourself to feel what comes naturally, But know that someday life will be better and it will be easier to smile.” Anonymous
Saying 23: Anonymous
“There is only one thing worse than speaking ill of the dead - and that is not speaking of the dead at all.”
Saying 24: Joshua Loth Liebman
“The function of friends is to be the sounding board for grief.”
Saying 25: Ashleigh Brilliant
“When death is eventually abolished, how will people ever understand what it was like to be mortal?”
Saying 26: Christopher Lucas, “The Silent Grief’
“Loss is difficult. People are irreplaceable. You have loved someone and that loved one is gone. That loss will not go away, nor can you expect it to. How important a role the sense of loss plays in your life is another matter. You can remember and have positive feelings for, the dead person without continuing to grieve.”
Saying 27: Leo Buscallia, “Bus 9 to Paradise”
“It was difficult to part with such a positive force in my life. But nothing is forever. In reality we never lose the people we love. They become immortal through us. They continue to live in our hearts and minds. They participate in our every act, idea, and decision. No one will ever replace them and in spite of the pain we are richer for all the years invested in them. Because of them, we have so much more to bring to our present relationships and all those to come.”