When Your Friends Go Through Deep Loss and Tragedy

When our friends go through any type of deep loss or tragedy, whether a divorce, death, or any other type of situation or difficulty, it is our nature to want their pain to simply stop.

It is our nature to even feel uncomfortable with whatever they need in the moment, whether to retell yet another time some part of their story and what they’ve been through, or whatever it is they need in the moment.

Divorce is a death. And just as the grief process when a death has occurred cycles through many places and spaces, so it does with divorce. I think it is easier to recognize the physical death of a loved one as a death than it is to recognize that divorce is also a death. It is the death of whom you thought that person was and a death of dreams. And it is a scourging process where we suffer many other losses and disruptions to our lives.

We make a lifelong commitment to someone and then it falls apart in such grievous ways we cannot imagine or express. There is no timetable we can put on the grief process that goes along with this, however confusing it may be to both the person going through it and those who love them.

When we listen to someone, they are like an onion with many layers. The Listener may think that the expression of the moment is the deepest layer, whether it be anger or sorrow or any other expression. I think what people need to understand is that the layers constantly change. The Sufferer themself is still processing and constantly arranging and rearranging the layers so to speak… so what appears in the moment to be the deepest layer of the onion is only the layer that is deepest in that moment.

Unlike the metaphorical real onion – the onion of loss, anger and heartbreak is ever changing and rearranging its layers as the person attempts to process within themselves all that happened. Part of the reason suffering people keep telling their story is it helps them to verbalize and keep rearranging the layers. Eventually these layers fall into a more stable place within the person’s mind, heart and emotions. Having been through a divorce many years ago, I know that this process takes quite a while. Having been through a number of losses and difficulties in my life, I also know that true healing comes from embracing all thoughts, information and emotions and all else one determines they need for their own unique healing process. Shutting down these processes prematurely does not bring a deeper healing.

Each friend, each family member, bring something else to the processing table – so to speak. Some part of some interaction and synergy especially perhaps with the specific history with the person, that is helpful to the Sufferer.

While the Listener may hear one expression in some daytime moment… the person suffering often cannot verbalize for example, the dream they had during the previous night about their loss. These deepest images and internal experiences reside within the Sufferer’s private pain.

Please be patient, please understand there is no timetable on grief. There is no one way that grief should be expressed or processed.

While on one hand we may think that not processing or speaking about our Loss with emotion, will make the pain go away more quickly, it will not.

For me, this is certainly not the first time I’ve been around the block with deep loss and heartbreak. I have heard from others in recent times of so many who have been struggling with many situations and nightmares and various losses.

Be patient with your friends. There is no one formula that will help your friend heal or show you the way to be there for them in the process.

And we who are going through these difficulties also need to be patient with those who Love us and are trying their best to help and support.