In 2014, Dr. Lucy C. Hone, a director at the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience and a university researcher witnessed a motorist slam his car into a car that was carrying her young daughter, instantly killing the child. See https://ideas.ted.com/sorrow-and-tragedy-will-happen-to-us-all-here-are-3-strategies-to-help-you-cope/ (Nov. 13, 2019). She recalls, “Suddenly, I was the one on the receiving end of all the expert advice — and I didn’t like what I heard one little bit.” For example, the grief experts advised that she and her husband “were now prime candidates for family estrangement, … likely to get divorced, and … at high risk of mental illness.” Id. They were told they could expect to spend the next five years experiencing the five stages of grief.
Dr. Hone rebelled. “I didn’t need to be told how bad things were; I already knew things were truly terrible. What I needed most was hope.” Id.
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For many, this holiday season is going to heighten the sense of loss we daily experience after the death of a loved one. I was aware of this phenomenon, yet I recall that by the time my first holiday season without Lee rolled around –a mere six months after her death—I had felt placid. Indeed, around this same time, I first began seriously to contemplate dating other women.
On a certain level, feeling this way seemed to be wrong. For example, I felt guilty and embarrassed to admit that I was investigating dating sites, and before proceeding I had sought input from several trusted friends whose opinions I respected. In the end, I started dating and was fortunate to meet Robyn after just a couple of months. Today, we have been together for nearly four years.
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Dr. Hone aptly observes that we “adapt to the future without them.” See “Will My Grief Ever End?, Psychology Today (February 2, 2023), found at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resilient-grieving/202302/will-my-grief-ever-end. Looking back today, I believe that I have adapted quite well. Even so, there were occasions when possessing a positive outlook could feel like a betrayal of my love for Lee.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “resiliency” describes the “ability to be happy, successful, etc. again after something difficult or bad has happened.” By this definition I am resilient. However, bereavement theorists have been highly skeptical about individuals who do not show pronounced distress reactions or who display positive emotions following a loss, assuming that such individuals are rare and suffer from pathological or dysfunctional forms of absent grief. See Bonanno, Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience (American Psychologist Vol. 59, No. 1, 20 –28 Jan 2004 found at https://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/gab38/faculty-profile/files/americanPsychologist.pdf. It’s a notion that goes back to the work of Freud.
As a result, when it comes to grief, being resilient has carried a negative connotation. Only recently have experts in the study of resilient psychology come to recognize that there is no empirical evidence to support these long-held bereavement theories. On the contrary, experts now believe that “resilience to the unsettling effects of interpersonal loss is not rare but relatively common…” See Bonanno, supra. Professor Bonanno attributes this transformation in thinking to a belated recognition that “research on acute and chronic grief and PTSD historically has dominated the literature on how adults cope with aversive life events, [and thus] such reactions have generally come to be viewed as the norm.” Id.
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When applied to grief, resilience describes the ability to maintain a stable equilibrium. According to Professor Bonanno, recent studies suggest multiple pathways to achieving such resilience. For me, being resilient comes naturally. However, I don’t discount the additional fact that Lee suffered through a long final illness and had a lengthy history of serious health problems that even predated our time together as being a significant part of my unique grief calculus.
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Dr. Hone writes: “You don’t have to sever your connection with the dead, move on, and leave them behind completely; if anything, grieving is about learning to love them in separation. Find ways to keep them present in your world; to honor them and hold them close, while still allowing you to function out there, and slowly grow used to doing it without them.” “Will My Grief Ever End,” supra.
During this holiday season, these sound like words to live by.
