Grief and recovery: finding unexpected sources of strength
By
Elizabeth Harper Neeld,
Ph.D.

I surprised myself…A young man
servicing my car told me I needed some air in my tires and asked
how many pounds the tires were supposed to carry. My first thought
was to respond as I had in other situations like this:
This is
my husband’s car, and he died a few months ago…I don’t know how
many pounds of pressure for the tires…I don’t know what to tell
you.
But this time I did not tell my usual story.
“Just a minute,” I said to the attendant. “I have to look it up.” I
opened the glove box, took out the owner’s manual, and located the
information the young man needed. I sat back in the seat as if I
had just climbed Mt. Everest. I felt such satisfaction! I felt so
capable, so strong! Why, I even felt like someone who might have a
future! (Excerpt from
Seven Choices by Elizabeth Harper
Neeld)
While we might wish for a miraculous change over night from feeling
deep in grief to feeling joy in living again, this usually does not
happen. Instead, we move forward in our grief process in starts and
stops, in bits and pieces, in what feels like forward one step,
back two. The outer changes necessary to live our lives without the
person we have lost usually feel thrust upon us. The internal
changes we are required to make are slow and often
imperceptible.
One of these internal changes occurs at those moments when we find
the will and the ability to take an action that, as small as it
might be, reveals to us that we are stronger than we might have
thought we were. These little actions give us courage. They show
that we are making important and healthy changes. We often actually
surprise ourselves.
Here is what a widower told me once:
One day I decided, “Hey, I’m sick and tired of eating in
restaurants. I’m not willing to keep on running away from myself
and from learning how to do things on my own. Tonight I’m going to
fix round steak and cream gravy!”
So I stopped by Kroger’s and picked up a beautiful piece of round
steak—a little expensive and far too much for one person. But I’d
just eat the leftovers, I decided. “I’ll have parsley boiled
potatoes that you can put the gravy over, a fresh loaf of bread,
and a little salad—lettuce, tomato, some mayonnaise on it,” I said
to myself.
I started preparing all of this as soon as I got home. I was really
anxious. I cooked the steak, cut up the salad, got the potatoes to
boiling. Then I thought, “Oh, my God, I don’t know how to make
gravy.” I’d tried when Laura was alive, and it always came out in
one lump instead of liquid. “Well,” I thought, “it’s time for you
to learn. If you’re going to have gravy, that’s what you got to do.
What you gonna do, otherwise—invite Mama down from Oklahoma to cook
it for you?”
I began. “Settle down and think about it. If you do this first and
this second, it’s probably going to turn out all right”…I ended up
making the most beautiful pot of gravy you’ve ever seen. The only
thing was that I made too much, but I saved it and put it on my
toast the next morning.
You know, I found myself to some extent—I found this independence,
this ability to live on my own—through cooking that cream
gravy. (Excerpt from
Seven Choices by Elizabeth Harper
Neeld)
A study of widows carried out at Harvard University uncovered an
important finding. Those women whose grieving was moving toward a
healthy (and even creative) outcome had “at a particular
moment…asserted themselves in some way and had therefore found
themselves on a path to recovery.”
The choice to take little actions—like the widower making his
gravy, like my looking up the car tire pressure—is an internal
commitment, a private decision. By doing these small things, we
make sure that we don’t end up living—in the words of an old French
saying—as a person whose clock has stopped.
One of the things taking these small, seemingly insignificant
actions does is make a life-giving statement:
I know I have the ability to replan my life so that I am not
helpless for the rest of my life at the same time that I
acknowledge and honor the loss.
It is in the little things we do that we demonstrate this kind of
courage and strength.
Related articles:
•
Comfort Quickies: Self Care While Grieving
•
Appropriate Expectations You Can Have for Yourself in Grief
•
You Know You're Getting Better When...
Also by Elizabeth Harper Neeld:
•
What Helps When We're Experiencing The Unthinkable
•
Loss of Our Assumptive World
•
How Long is This Grieving Going to Last?
•
The Physical Stress of Grieving
Dr. Elizabeth Harper
Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights born of personal
experience to people rebuilding their lives after suffering grief
and loss. As an internationally recognized and accomplished
consultant, advisor, and author of more than twenty books -
including
Tough Transitions
and
Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your
World
- she is committed to work that helps lift the human
spirit.
(Author's photo by Joey Bieber)
Photo by green umbrella/Flickr Creative Commons
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