Not Everyone Cries At A Funeral
Do you feel conscious at a funeral and not share the same sadness, distress, or anger as everyone else? Even when the loss is close to your heart? Maybe you want to cry, scream, not care, and cannot not … may won’t.
Everything feels all at once and nothing at all.
You’re not alone with those feelings and experiences. This doesn’t mean the grief and loss didn’t have an impact or wasn’t significant in some way for you.
Some people process grief differently, and grieving is a process. There is no one stage that a person needs to be in at a given time. You can barter, rage, feel numb and disoriented, and deny that the person is gone or that anything happened to that person. That this doesn’t affect you like you thought or wanted to feel about it.
Loss can devastate and relieve at the same time.
You can feel all of it and not shed a tear.
Processing grief is like creating art. The work takes time, being present in the moment, and being still with the art for as long as you need, and the work doesn’t have a deadline to be met.
There is no pressure to perform grief or entertain your loss to soothe others’ expectations when grieving a loss. Your grief is yours to respond to how you choose.
Someone can start grieving with acceptance or start with denial.
Processing grief is fluid and flexible.
Your response comes from a place of emotional capacity, and it’s okay when your capacity is not what you expected or wanted. The impact may be a sign of learning how you respond to grief and how you grieve. To be still with the felt presence of grief.
Being still does not mean being calm or in control; being still means being with what presents itself.
When you grieve with fluidity and flexibility, it’s like breathing in air again and not pretending breathing happens under water.
Being like a fish when you were a bird doesn’t seem natural, but it may seem a lot like how grief alters what we know about the world around us, ourselves, and others.
Come to the surface again, take in the air, and breathe. Sometimes a natural response to grief is simply to breathe and take the next step that prioritizes presence over performance.
Grief is a felt presence, not a performance.
