Myths about Grief
Grief and its expression is often uncomfortable for people not going through it. Many of the myths that we learn, from early childhood on, about grief need to be dispelled.
Cremations in Roanoke, VA following the deaths of loved ones will inevitably bring grief for the families as they process and adjust to the loss of people they love and care about. Western society is uncomfortable with the open expression of grief, so from a very early age, we are discouraged from feeling it by several myths that have permeated our culture.
One myth about grief is not to feel bad. This is taught to us in a way that says bad feelings, sad feelings, and sorrowful feelings are not normal and not acceptable, while being happy, feeling good, and feeling upbeat are not only acceptable, but the only “normal” feelings. Therefore, when the intensity of grief hits us when someone we love dies, we don’t know what to do with the onslaught of feelings that aren’t happy, good, or upbeat. It can create a tough mental and emotional battle that often results in trying to stuff those feelings deep inside, out of sight and out of mind.
The problem with continually stuffing these kinds of emotions away and not feeling them and dealing with them as they come is that eventually there’s no more room to stuff anymore of them. Therefore, when the next batch comes, the emotional dam breaks and we can find ourselves dealing with a lifetime of bad, sad, or unhappy feelings that we never worked through and healed from when they actually occurred.
Another myth that prevails about grief is that a loss can be replaced by something else. We learn this early on when pets die, and new pets are acquired to replace the pets who are gone. However, the emotional connection we had to the pets that died can’t be replaced. And while a new pet may ease the pain of the pet that died, when it comes to people, there are no adequate substitutes or replacements for the people we’ve loved and lost. They are irreplaceable.
Grieving alone is something that Western society favors. The messages we get early on say that grieving should be done in private, but when we’re out in public, we put on happy, cheery faces and act as though nothing is wrong. The problem, though, with grieving in solitude is that grief becomes bigger and harder to deal with when we have nothing but our own thoughts and four walls to bounce it off of, talk it through with, and trying to make sense of it with.
A fourth myth about grief is that time will heal all wounds, even the emotional ones we get when someone we loved dies. The reality is that all the time in the world doesn’t fill the void of our loved ones who have died. The wound of those losses may scab over eventually, but it doesn’t heal completely, and the scab is surprisingly easy to pull off and reopen the wound so that we experience all the pain of the original source of that wound.
Western society teaches us that even when we’re hurting and grieving, our responsibility is to put our own feelings aside so that we can be strong for other people. The problem with this myth is that it tacitly says that grief and sorrow are signs of weakness. In other words, it’s okay for other people to grieve, but it’s not okay for us to grieve. In reality, part of a person’s strength and support for others is to share their grief.
For additional information about grief resources after cremations in Roanoke, VA, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lynch Conner-Bowman Funeral Home can assist you. You can visit our funeral home at 140 Floyd Ave., Rocky Mount, VA, 24151, or you can call us today at (540) 483-5533.
