Alyssa is manager of bereavement services with St. Gray Hospice. She lost her brother at the age of 25. She talks about four truths about grief. It's different for every person. Your grief is unique to you, and it's okay to grieve as long as you need to.
Alyssa is manager of bereavement services with St. Gray Hospice. She lost her brother at the age of 25. She talks about four truths about grief. Grief is not as simple as we think it is. It's different for every person.
We're all going to be grieving something. We all experience it, but we may experience it differently. Your grief is unique to you, and it's okay to grieve as long as you need to. We're always here to support you.
Hi, everyone. My name is Alyssa. I am manager of bereavement services with St. Gray Hospice. Today in our livestream, we're going to kind of talk about four truths of grief. And before I get started on any of that, I actually kind of want to, you know, share a little bit more about me. So what brought me to the field of bereavement work? I have past experience in social work, so my background is in social work, and I have kind of been more interested in all of that as things have kind of come on.
And I just wanted to kind of share more with my personal experience, you know, with grief. Back in 2019. December of 2019, actually, right on Christmas, I tragically lost my brother at the age of 25. So I just kind of wanted to be able to share more about my experience and how long it actually took me to start grieving. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining. So, yeah, when my brother passed, I truly did not start grieving until about two to three years after his loss. That's when I truly started to notice kind of more about those symptoms and things like that.
And over the years, I've truly learned more about the truth about grief and how I have been able to confront my own grief, as well as help others grieve through their own journeys as well. So I've also learned more about grief and the common misconceptions our society has truly kind of put on. You know, kind of told us how we should be grieving. So that's kind of what brings me into talking more about those four truths about grief. So if at any time, you know, you have more questions about my story and my background, I'm happy to help answer those questions and kind of share my personal experiences in grief.
But I think just being able to have those personal touches kind of help us navigate all of those. So, really, when we focus on those four truths about grief, grief is not as simple as we think it is. Right? It's not as simple as those five stages that we're told about. You know, we think about those five. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Grief isn't that simple. Right? We don't grieve for five weeks. We don't grieve one week at a time, and we don't grieve one week at each of those stages.
Grief is different for every person. You have no idea how you're going to respond at each of those situations, especially when you're faced with grief in tragic ways. So for me, it's been five years, like I mentioned, since my brother passed away, and I'm still struggling. I have my days where I'm struggling more with that anger stage, or I start to kind of think about, why was it him? Why at such a young age? Why did it happen the way it did? I wish it were more simple, and I wish I knew when that suffering would end for us.
Right? But like many things in life, grief isn't simple. And it's not going to just be each of those stages at each time. We may have gone through that acceptance stage at one point, and then now we're back into that anger or denial stage. So, again, we're going to go through each of those roles differently and at different times. Grief is, you know, it's a roller coaster. So that's the second truth of the four truths. Grief isn't like climbing a mountain. It's not starting from the bottom, going to the top.
Grief isn't concrete, right? So when we are thinking about grief and we're hoping that there's going to be a timeline to grief, we can't say, oh, it's really bad today, but tomorrow's going to be better. It's different for every person. And that's why things can be scary when we're grieving. We can't study grief. We can't tell you that everything's gonna be okay in the long run, and we can't tell you how you're going to react at each stage. So it's really important when you're faced with those rough moments and those rollercoaster moments that we really step back and kind of look at those days and know that we are going to have those low days.
Some days are going to be moderately, you know, flat. And that's okay. You're allowed to have bad days. You're allowed to have those joyful moments, and it's okay to be going through each of those stages. So again, you know, being okay with going through a rollercoaster while we're grieving. A third truth about grief. Grief has no algorithm. Grief doesn't care. Grief doesn't have restrictions. You can experience, you know, grief following the death in a family, the loss of a pet, a bad grade, any kind of change that we're going through, we're gonna grieve.
Our society would have us believe that facing, you know, a death in our family is incredibly different than when we're getting a bad grade or we lose our job. The way we grieve. Each of those is going to be different. However, they're both gonna affect our world in the same way. Right. Society wants us to push, you know, get over it, right? They want us to just make peace with it. When we are looking at, you know, the way that we grieve, we're ultimately going to kind of make grief kind of become that piece of us, because most people aren't equipped with the proper tools, the resources, or things like that to have the capacity to sit with someone in their grief.
So take your time. Grief has absolutely no rules, and there's no algorithm to getting through grief. Fourth, truth about grief, grief is disruptive. When you grieve, you're working towards two goals, understanding and accepting that this time is something that is our new normal. Right? To get to that place, you must understand that whatever happened has disrupted us and the rhythm of our life. But how can we now take a mental health day, take a mental health week, to help us get through that grief journey?
It's okay to step back and check out for a while because it's our best way to get through that grief by not fighting it. So if you're given into that disruption and work towards accepting that, and then it'll then become our new normal. So allowing grief to kind of be that healing piece for us, grief is not a waste of time. Grieving that lost is not, you know, a way to just sulk in our feelings, and grief is not a weakness. So making a way for grief to kind of become a part of us is okay. Grief is a way for us to be compassionate with ourselves as we navigate that loss that we didn't think that we could survive.
So just some final thoughts on, you know, those four truths about grief. And those are just some things that I've learned about, you know, myself while I've confronted my own grief. But we're all going to be grieving something. It doesn't matter the day, it doesn't matter the time. We all experience it, but we may experience it differently. Just because we don't label something as grief, it doesn't mean that it is not going to be grief. So grief is going to affect us all differently and very uniquely.
Unfortunately, that's what makes it so hard to understand, because we don't go through the same thing the same way as everybody else. So don't go searching for answers when you're grieving, because our society has taught us to really just kind of get over it and get through that grief. So in reality, your grief is unique to you, and it's okay to grieve as long as you need to. And sometimes it might be delayed. So really just kind of focus on the way that you grieve. And it doesn't mean that you have to face it alone either.
We're always here to support you. So I just wanted to share a little bit more about my personal journey and some of those truths about grief. But I'm happy to kind of share more with you at any point in time. Have a great day, everyone.
