Make a poster or draw a picture in memory of the lost loved one, place it at the cemetery. Share the memories. Ignore helpless or hurtful advice. Reach out and touch. Identify your needs, then ask for help. Turn to your friends and family for support. Do not turn to harmful substances, such as drugs or alcohol. Know that you are loved and have a purpose to live.
Make plans, set goals, keep busy with small day-to-day chores. Understand healing comes slowly, in increments. All Rights Reserved.
All material is intended for individual use only. Any other use, such as distribution, promoting one's ministry or adding to websites, is prohibited unless written permission granted by Pastoral Care Inc. You may have to seek professional help for those you serve. Web View Mobile View. Quotes for Sermons Jokes for Sermons Misc. Sermons Devotions. Statistics on Addictions. We as humans move toward integrating loss into our lives not just by grieving but by mourning.
So what is the distinction? Grief is the constellation of internal thoughts and feelings we have when someone we love dies. Think of grief as the container. It holds your thoughts, feelings, and images of your experience when someone you love dies. In other words, grief is the internal meaning given to the experience of loss. Mourning is when you take the grief you have on the inside and express it outside yourself.
Talking about the person who died, crying, expressing your thoughts and feelings through art or music, journaling, praying, and celebrating special anniversary dates that held meaning for the person who died are just a few examples of mourning. Making the choice to not just grieve but authentically mourn provides you with the courage and confidence to integrate the death of someone loved into your life.
I have come to believe that to heal your grief, you must mourn it. Somewhere in the collision between the heart, which searches for permanency and connection, and the brain, which acknowledges separation and loss, there is a need for all of us to authentically mourn. Authentic mourning means being consciously aware of the painful emotions of grief and feeling safe to express them. This may seem odd, because your initial response following loss is instinctive and organic.
The loss has taken place, and you naturally feel core feelings such as helplessness, anxiety, fear, despair, protest, and sadness. Herein lies the paradox—a wide range of instinctive responses occur, but you get to decide as your grief unfolds into mourning if you will truly experience these responses or instead inhibit, suppress, or deny them. Actually, befriending such emotions is what makes it possible to experience, eventually, a sense of renewed meaning and purpose in your life.
Yet the emotions you sometimes most want to avoid are the ones you most need to attend to. While grief is typically described as a normal and natural emotional reaction to loss, mourning is considered to be the outward manifestation of those emotions. When a person is said to be grieving, they are likely to experience emotions like sadness, pain, worry, and anxiety.
But, when grief turns into mourning, it's generally defined as the public showing of that emotion. However, even with the distillation of inside versus outside, there are many differences between grief and mourning. Dealing with loss is painful and challenging. Most people will experience the death of a close loved one, and how they react to that loss can have a lasting effect in the months or years to come.
Society generally interchanges grief and mourning to describe the feelings, emotions, and behaviors following a significant loss. Although these two words are related, they aren't interchangeable. Grief represents how an individual thinks and feels after suffering loss, while mourning is the outward manifestation of grief-related feelings. When you know and understand the differences between the two, you equip yourself to better cope with your loss.
Mourning, grief, bereavement, and loss are all normal responses to loss, and we understand grief as the psychological or physiological response to bereavement. These reactions transform as time passes, and no two people will experience loss in the same way.
Symptoms of grief may include some or all of the following:. By contrast, mourning is how an individual expresses their grief to the outside world and may include:. Every person who has lost someone or something meaningful to them may experience grief after suffering a loss.
As you learn to cope with your loss, you may experience the different stages of grief associated with the healing process.
There are eight main types of grief generally recognized by therapists and scholars alike, which are the following:.
Though grief can be synonymous with sadness, there are a few other emotions that you may also experience that may not be considered part and parcel of the grieving process.
Describing the emotions that one goes through is one way of defining grief, but experiencing grief can be another thing entirely. One such example is crying whenever someone mentions your deceased loved one.
Here are some other examples:. Depending on your culture, family traditions, and societal norms, mourning can take on a very formal approach that includes certain grief rituals and time-periods in which mourning is expected to take place.
Alan D. Especially when someone dies at a very old age, friends and family may no longer be alive to attend their funeral or memorial services.
Professional mourners may also interact with the few people known to the deceased who are still alive and able to attend.
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