Why the Grief of Disability Might Require Special Supports
When we hear the word “grief,” we usually all have the same idea in our heads: that someone died and we’re hurting as we come to terms with the loss. What many people haven’t recognized is how grief is a much broader concept than just the aftermath of death. Grief is how humans respond to losses of all kinds. These losses can be another person, a pet, a relationship, an object, an idea, an identity, an experience, or a physical or mental capacity. When we lose anything we’ve come to value, we grieve.
It's important to know that grief itself is not a problem to be solved. It’s not harmful. It’s not a sign of weakness, brokenness, or injury. Grief is a natural, normal, human process…just as human as love, in fact. Grief has a way of moving through its process in whatever way it needs to, like the water transporting itself down a riverbed. Gravity pulls it along, downward to its destination. Sometimes it encounters terrain that causes it to churn almost violently, roiling, forming whitewater, whirlpools, and rapids. Other times, it’s placid, calm, and slow. So long as it’s moving, it’s healthy. But, like a stagnant pond, when the water becomes motionless, it has the potential to become toxic. So what can prevent the grieving process from moving naturally along its way?
Sometimes grief is more intense than others…when the value of what we’ve lost is high, the grief is profound. In these cases, we rely on our supports to keep us from being overwhelmed by the rushing water. Consider the most common response to the death of a loved one: we gather together as a community to mourn, to participate in rituals, to cry together, to laugh together, to reminisce together, to validate each other’s emotions, and to assure each other that we are not alone.
But there are times when these support systems can’t hold us up against the grief-water slamming into us. When others can’t relate to our loss, when they haven’t experienced anything similar, or when we feel isolated because there is no ritual to remind us we’re connected. When the loss is complicated, ongoing, confusing, misunderstood, or minimized, the grieving process can be more powerful than the pillars we normally rely on to keep us upright. So we understandably try a different strategy to cope: contain the grief, build a damn, stop the rush of water. While this meets the immediate need, the cost is that the grief is no longer moving. It’s stalled, stagnated, and sometimes toxic, leading to depression or other mental “injuries.”
Disability loss, when our bodies lose a treasured capacity, can create these conditions. The value of the loss is vitally high, the closeness of the loss is profoundly intimate, and the ability to share the loss with others is difficult and energy-consuming. We can’t respond with the same kinds of rituals. It’s easy to feel isolated. The flow of grief encounters a damn that sometimes feels too massive to manage.
Please know that your loss is important. Your grief is normal. And that its healthy movement through you is possible. If the grief feels stalled, toxic, or confusing, that’s an important sign that getting some help could be a good idea. Counseling can guide you as you create channels through which the grief can flow safely, in all its complexity, intensity, and humanness. Counseling can serve as just the right kind of support structure you need to stay standing as the stormwater rushes by.