Insights from Grief Recovery Sessions

Automattic recently started offering a new benefit: Grief Recovery sessions. Having read and thought a lot about grief in the last five years, I was a bit skeptical as it felt like the intent might be to help one process grief in order to get back to full productivity. What does “recovery” from grief even mean? Do I believe in “recovery”? After my brother died this summer and not being willing to go through trying to find a damn therapist, I decided to sign up. Only 10 folks are selected on a quarterly basis and I didn’t really know what my chances were to get picked. As a side note, it was a bit surreal to fill out an application to see if your grief “counted” enough to be selected.

Before applying, I reflected on what recovery meant to me and what would feel like a solid outcome of going through this process. After all, opening oneself up to these emotions in the presence of others is not at all neutral. I have had to learn from a few painful encounters how gentle to be with when and to whom I share my grief. I knew for me that recovery meant less of a return to some fantastical normal and more about a deeper integration into my life. For too long, I haven’t let these parts of myself into the light.

The sessions followed the The Grief Recovery Handbook, which you can actually listen to on Spotify and do on your own or with a trusted loved one. The handbook was created by folks who have gone deep into grief in various forms and I felt the ways it impacted how they wrote the book and what they asked of the readers. For example, reading the material or listening were offered as options outright, knowing that it can be hard to concentrate when grieving. Often times, the sessions required you go through chapters twice, likely to ensure what you needed to hear actually managed to seep in. The sessions centered around being as honest as possible, which I loved, as it actually gives you a chance to meet what’s going on. The homework gave structure to what feels impossible to grasp and helped me see connections I didn’t know were there between an early and long love of mine and my abandonment trauma. In some cases, I shared some of the homework with a few loved ones partially to see what they noticed and partially to let more folks in to the disenfranchised grief that has weighed me down between “smaller” griefs, like closeted relationships, and larger griefs, like my dead brother who I never had the chance to know thanks to surrogacy. This homework included a loss history graph, a way to visualize all things considered losses in one visual, and a relationship graph with an individual I wanted to process. Part of the beauty of the program is that it allows for broader expression of grief to cover people, places, ideas, and feelings. The facilitator was also incredibly flexible–I cancelled sessions twice and split another in two in order to adapt to where I was.

I wanted to write up some very high level insights from these sessions for my future self and as a way to encourage others to perhaps consider going through the process. Before doing so, I’d consider what “recovery” from grief means to you.

• I often don’t show my goofier and fun side until much later in knowing someone. I find more comfort and ease in a deeper space. Part of this is because you need to trust and relax to “play”. I have a hard time doing this and it’s something I’ve seen come up repeatedly in new friendships.
• I have a fairly consistent grief cycle that I can name: Shock > Loop (talk about it a ton from different angles) > Compartmentalize (to the point that I can truly push aside whatever happened) > ritual/numb/breaking free/collapsing (do something to shake it loose again and collapse). We talkeda bout getting between the Loop > Compartmentalize stage as a way to interrupt the larger cycle and integrate sooner. 
• Anger and grief dance a bit.
• Things that didn’t serve me that people said include: “You need to deal with this alone”, “Do you have to go to the funeral?”, etc.
• Many of my loved ones are not used to seeing me off so it’s been tough to trust and let folks in when often the reaction is one of shutting things down, not knowing what to do, not wanting to ask, etc. This has been something I continue to work on to let the right folks in and not be so distrustful.
• There’s no need to create a roller coaster of highs and lows when you limit the highs and lows and can be with what’s here. This is part of removing distractions (or STERBS as they talk about in the book aka activities that create the illusion that they are helping you recover from loss). It was immensely helpful to name and see the STERBS I had. As a buddhist podcast I listened to shared, awareness can happen at any stage of an action and all of it is helpful (before, during, after, long after you choose to distract rather than stay with what is).
• We talked about the “exquisite risk to stay” with what is and it’s inspired me to start reading Mark Nepo’s book on the topic as I first heard the phrase on a Tara Brach podcast during this process.
• We talked about the role hope has played as a source of a reason to stay alive and to pursue knowing my birth family. I had to have hope to keep trying. It’s also what has kept me from moving on from some connections as that hope is so incredibly strong and hard to turn off. What does the hopeful part of me need? There’s something it’s not getting and holding on as a result. It’s an overused muscle. In reflecting on this, I found a journal entry from over a decade ago in a moment of trying to hold on: “Hope is what I turn to when I want to close it all up. I turn to hope to keep me open, to keep me wondering, to keep me curious, to keep me here.” Another plug to keep a journal as it was incredibly powerful to see my own words leaving a bread crumb trail to how I got locked in.
• The nervous system likes things slow and steady which is a great reminder for when my anxiety spikes, particularly with panic attacks I’ve been facing for the last 3 years.
• We talked about compartmentalization and how that’s my brain protecting my capacity. This led to talking about the differences between avoidance, compartmentalizing, and gently putting something down.
• We talked about how one of the connections I was grieving from and stuck on was partially due to how seen I felt within the dynamic at key points when my grief wasn’t seen or acknowledged.
• We talked about how the ego wants answers and consistency but the human part of me will continue to get it wrong when it comes to responding to grief. That’s okay and by design!
• We talked about how much I have a lack of compassion for compartmentalization. I see it as a bad thing inherently and it’s part of why I want more integration. Similar to hope, I want to be more intentional and aware when I choose to do either (choose hope, compartmentalize). This lack of compassion for compartmentalization shows up when others are avoidant with me and my harsh reaction to it at times.
• We need release mechanisms and we need a variety in those ways of releasing. What offers a release for me? Stretching, slowing down, wood carving, etc. These were helpful to name. As part of this, we talked about how connecting with the body is underutilized in our effort to ground (ex: baths).
• No one can take that I was there just before my grandma died. No one can take from me that I met my brother. These are my memories. My moments.

As a final fun insight, the above is chaotic and incomplete, as I left notes in a variety of places, like a scavenger hunt. I find the lack of organization interesting, as it’s not like me. It made pulling this together arduous, but I think it reflects how hard it was for me to engage; that I could only manage to scribble down things here and there, tucked away in different places, unable to see it all at once.