What is grief exhaustion?

Unlike normal tiredness that often disappears with sufficient rest and adequate sleep, grief exhaustion is a far more intense and pervasive fatigue. Following the loss of a spouse, our entire world is up-ended and we’re thrust into a deeply painful and unfamiliar existence. As we grapple with all that is thrown at us, our body and mind can often feel under constant attack, leaving us feeling empty and hollowed out. And, with zero time to recover, we can enter into a state of burn out, which no amount of sleep or rest can fix.

How does grief exhaustion show up?

Grief exhaustion can manifest in several different ways - physically, mentally and socially. Whether we experience a range of these symptoms, or just a handful, they can nonetheless feel incredibly overwhelming. 

Physically

Grief exhaustion can decimate our physical health, leaving us weakened, depleted and unwell. It is often characterised by an intense and unrelenting fatigue and loss of energy...

There are certain days in the year that feel especially challenging as a widow. Birthdays, holiday festivities, anniversaries - and Valentine’s Day. 

Whether we’re avoiding the card aisle in the supermarket, skipping over the romantic dramas on television, or turning down the Valentine’s playlist on the radio, this time of year can feel like hard work. Surrounded by happy couples in love, Valentine’s Day and the lead-up to it can highlight our loss, deepen our pain and cause us to retreat further within ourselves.

In this blog, I’ll explore why Valentine’s Day often feels particularly challenging, why the emotions that surface during this time are valid and how we can learn to  support ourselves through this difficult date.

 Why is Valentine’s Day so tough for widows?

1) Bad timing 

 We’ve just about survived the winter holidays. Christmas and New Year are behind us and we’re nearly through the darkness and gloominess of  January. And just as we feel ready to start venturing ou...

During grief, we’re engulfed by trauma. Our nervous system goes into overdrive and our days are consumed with fighting grief triggers. From hearing our loved one’s favourite song to stumbling upon an old shirt of theirs, grief triggers can ignite cherished memories that are painful and difficult to process. 

However, the concept of ‘glimmers’, introduced by world-leading trauma expert Deb Dana, could prove game-changing in our battle against these triggers and could reshape our grief journey.  Often framed as the opposite to triggers, glimmers can help us to find small moments of joy in loss, strengthen our resolve and provide our nervous system with some much-needed relief.

What are glimmers?

Glimmers are not lengthy periods of unbridled euphoria. They are instead, as Dana describes in her 2018 book, ‘The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy’  “micro moments” of peace, happiness or magic that may occur throughout the day - moments which can spark positivity and help us to stay grounded, pre...

Over the years, one of the most commonly accepted theories for understanding grief has been ‘the five stages of grief’ - first outlined by Swiss-America psychiatrist, Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book, ‘On Death and Dying’. The theory suggests that grief can be understood as a series of sequential emotional stages that we progress through as we confront loss. It’s a theory that has become ingrained in our cultural consciousness and is widely regarded as the go-to instruction manual for processing our feelings of grief. However, this blog will outline why the ‘five stages of grief’ has actually been misinterpreted, how it could in fact be detrimental to our grief journey and how other models may better explain our experience of loss. 

What are the five stages of the Kubler-Ross model? 

1. Denial: a stage characterised by shock, numbness. We might find ourselves pushing back on the reality of our loss, refusing to believe that we’ve lost someone we love.
2. Anger: as our grief pre...

I’m often met with confusion and outright disbelief when I mention the words ‘grief’ and ‘positive’ in the same breath. And I get it, because let’s face it, grief is the antithesis of happiness. In fact, the word grief, has its roots in the Latin ‘gravare,’ which means to make heavy or to burden.

When our loved one dies our whole world, our sense of who we are, is ripped from underneath us. We’re left broken and bewildered and the pain that we feel - that deep, aching sense of loss, begins to smother us. Day to day life becomes a matter of survival, of mere self-preservation. We just want to get through it, without expending any additional effort. Our tanks are empty. We simply don’t have anything left to give.

How on earth then, are we supposed to grieve positively?

In this blog, I’ll discuss how grieving positively is not about dismissing or minimising our grief, on the contrary, grief is hard work. It has to be felt and we have to learn to sit with our discomfort in order to unde...

For me, anxiety and grief are inextricably intertwined. Bound to one another so completely, it almost feels as if anxiety is one of the unnamed stages of grief. I have yet to meet anyone affected by a significant loss, who hasn’t experienced some kind of anxiety. When we lose someone we love, especially a life partner, all the familiarity, security and comfort we have known is suddenly ripped away from us and we’re thrown into a world we didn’t ask to be in and one that we no longer recognise. As our life shatters, we are left exposed and vulnerable, ever mindful of our own mortality and how little control we have over our own future.

Whilst anxiety is a normal and expected part of the grieving process, burying and avoiding our fears will simply encourage them to escalate. Whilst there’s so much in life we simply cannot exert any control over, we have to recognise what does lie within our control and what we are capable of managing. And, when anxiety does surface, as it will for all o...

Feeling stuck in our grief is something many of us who have lost a loved one have experienced. Struggling under the crushing hopelessness of daily life, feeling trapped in a world in which we are unable to process our loss or build any momentum for the future – life can feel bleak and heavy. As our motivation to grasp and reshape our lives ebbs away and is replaced by a crippling sorrow, we might find ourselves more irritable, more irrational and more prone to overreaction. It may affect our ability to do our job, to parent our children and to hold relationships with those closest to us. However, whilst this can feel debilitating, it need not be permanent. 

In this blog, I will explain that whilst feeling stuck in grief is a natural part of the grieving process, there are ways in which you can release yourself from this inertia and create movement in your journey. I will explain how developing acceptance, lowering expectations, avoiding unhelpful comparisons with others and embracing ...

Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘happiness is a choice’? Have you ever been told, in the midst of your grief that you can ‘choose to be happy’, as if it’s actually a choice we have, as if during our grief, we can suddenly flick a switch and just be happy. Such sentiments however well-meaning, oversimplify the nature and complexities of grief and underestimate just how powerful a force it is. Those of us that are grieving want to be happy. Desperately. We want to wake up and feel free from the crushing weight we’ve been under. We want to get through each day and not feel like hiding away from the rest of the world. We are not deliberately choosing to be sad. However, as much as we want to choose to be happy, sometimes we just can’t. Grief is heavy and raw and it can smother us. And working through it takes extraordinary time, effort and attention.

However, whilst choosing to be happy is not something we necessarily have control over, and whilst there are many other things in life that ...

 Grief can be difficult to comprehend and explain. As such, using analogies can often help to unpick this topic. The four seasons is one such analogy. It provides a helpful framework within which grief can be better understood. Just as the seasons change, so during grief do our emotions, desires and energy levels fluctuate. The seasons can also affect our mood and our motivation as well as drive specific behaviours.

The following blog will focus on the seasonal nature of grief by exploring how autumn, winter, spring and summer reflect various stages of our grief journey. It will look at how the seasons not only influence our emotions but also present us with invaluable opportunities for self-care and healing.

Autumn

In many respects autumn is considered one of our more beautiful seasons, with the air turning crisp and the trees exploding into colour – ablaze with vibrant orange, red and yellow hues. However, during grief, autumn can feel less captivating and instead feel heavy and f...

I have had many conversations around the question 'Does grief last forever?' recently, It’s a big question, and I want to take this opportunity to explore how long grief lasts within my own story.

What does grief mean and how long can it last?

Is there an end point?

Does it disappear?

Do we reach a place where we are no longer grieving?

Can we grieve without suffering?

Definition of Grief

The definition of grief in Collins Dictionary is ‘a feeling of extreme sadness’. The Cambridge English Dictionary define it as ‘very great sadness, especially at the death of someone’.

These definitions could suggest that once the extreme sadness has passed you are no longer grieving. But, do we ever stop feeling extremely sad when we have lost someone we love? Especially if they have been taken too soon!

I have posted about this topic on my social media (give me a follow in Instagram), and have had mixed responses, understandably. Grief leaves us feeling bereft and exhausted in the early day...