The Tempest and the Egg

A personal reflection on grief, avoidance, and learning to truly feel

Grief echoes through nearly all my work. Sometimes loudly, other times so softly it is imperceptible.

Grief is part of life. Every form of change can initiate the grief process: leaving school or a job, retirement, children leaving home. Even the birth of a child can leave you grieving for the life of freedom and spontaneity that went before. Then there is the loss of a loved one, which can leave all other griefs and problems at the door.

As a nurse, death was no stranger, and we were taught the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. As a twenty year old I accepted this as how you moved through grief: in stages, messy perhaps, but in sequence. Twenty years later I would discover that grieving is certainly not tidy or sequential. It is more, at times, like being in a tempest, sometimes for just moments and other times for days.

My true initiation into bereavement and grief began in December 2003 when my husband Sandy was diagnosed with leukaemia. Grief became a bedfellow at every step of the journey: the diagnosis, Sandy spending weeks at a time in hospital as I juggled work, children, and visiting him. The high of remission, only to have that crushed two months later. The knowing that he was slipping away. Here the grief was shared, which I believe made things a little easier for me after he passed. Thanks to Landmark Forum, which I had attended a few years before, we had learnt to really communicate with each other. That made a profound difference, and I will always be grateful that, painful as it was in the moment, we were able to talk things through. Previously I had assumed he knew what I was feeling. How wrong I was.

It is often the unsaid things, the regrets, that cause grief to become complicated and stuck.

Sandy lost his battle and departed to the other side in January 2005. (A bizarre story for another day.) I coped as I always had, by deflecting and keeping busy. Looking back I am exhausted just thinking of everything I crammed into a day. I was not in denial about Sandy’s death. I was in avoidance of my emotions. Feelings would surface and I would deflect them as quickly as possible with doing.

My many doings included a degree in psychology with the Open University, and as if that were not enough studying, a diploma in Counselling, plus a course in Bereavement. It was this course, or more specifically its tutor, that possibly saved my life. By that point I was heading fast towards burnout. She helped me see what I was doing, and I immediately let go of everything except my studying and caring for my children. Probably still too much, if I am honest, but it was a start. It was not until 2012, when I began training as a Heart Intelligence Coach, that I finally started to feel my emotions fully and truly begin to deal with my grief.

I have since learnt that if we avoid or deny our emotions, they do not disappear. They become lodged in our cells and can contribute to illness, including serious diseases such as cancer.

I share more on this in my articles Listening to Your Heart and What Are Trapped Emotions?

How we deal with grief is as unique as we are. There is no set pattern or timeline. When I finally allowed myself to feel, I would move from sobbing in sadness to anger, frustration, acceptance, and laughter within moments. I felt like a crazy woman. I never did experience denial, depression or bargaining.

As a counsellor and coach I have done a great deal of bereavement work, and for many clients simply discovering that a whole myriad of emotions can arise within moments, and that this is entirely normal, was enough to bring real relief. I found that giving them the space to feel was often all that was needed. I do not believe we need to go back and dig up old stories and memories. This can often lead to retraumatisation. Those things arise naturally when the body is ready to handle them.

Happy Times - Our last holiday before Sandy’s diagnosis

The Egg Model of Grief

During my bereavement training I learnt a model of grief created by a mother in New Zealand who had lost a child. I no longer remember what it was formally called, but I always return to the analogy of an egg.

Each grief experience produces an egg yolk. It can be the size of a pinhead or as large as an ostrich egg. The yolk is always there, carrying the emotions of that loss, and at any point in our lives something can trigger us back into it.

As time passes, we develop more and more protective egg white around the yolk, as we build coping strategies: happy memories, mindfulness, gratitude, meditation, time in nature, and many more besides. This protection means that even when we are triggered, the intensity is shorter lived. We have developed the tools to feel, and then to move on.

The Most Important Lesson

I believe the most important thing when dealing with grief, or any emotional difficulty, is to actually feel. Really feel. This means learning to be in your body, because the mind will simply keep deflecting. Yoga, Pilates, grounding, breathwork, and any form of bodywork are excellent for this.

We also need other people. I find it both surprising and sad how many will avoid someone who is grieving, unsure what to say, or fearful that the person will become emotional. What we need is for it to be acceptable to be authentic and vulnerable, however messy that looks. We need to be willing to have difficult conversations with the people we love while they are still here. It is not easy. It takes practice. And it is not always possible if the other person has built an invisible wall around themselves. But it is worth trying.

If you are grieving, please do not struggle alone. Reach out to someone you trust.

Grief runs as a deep thread throughout the Gaea Remembered series. Book 1, Daughter of the Solstice, will be published soon.