Interesting story about grieving

[PamNY]

This piece from Salon is about a topic discussed here in a thread about grieving.

Specifically, the idea is that perhaps we don't need to "let it all out."

I'm very interested in how our culture has evolved over time. I do think some openness about grief is good; when my beloved grandmother died in 1976 I had no idea that my crazy emotions were normal, and I certainly had no one to talk with about it. I think that would be less likely to happen now.

However, it does seem that things gotten a bit overboard.

[badger]

I think someone posted a link to another article on the fact that grief doesn't have to have all the stages that Kubler-Ross depicted, how she pretty much penned that on one particular case, but it just caught on.

What I have realized through my own process of grief is that there is no right or wrong way to grieve, and that it's as unique as the person who's experiencing it. For someone to say "you have to do this or feel that" is just BS because everyone's different and they handle things differently.

What the counselor I saw said was, as long as I'm not incapacitated and incapable of functioning in day to day activities, what I'm going through (or lack thereof in the stages theory) is "normal".

But regarding public show of emotion, I don't think it's a bad thing. We're more self aware these days, and I think it's good to be able to show how you're feeling rather than putting on a "brave face". Psychotherapy used to be such a stigma-laden thing where you only sought it if you were "crazy". I remember as a 15 year old I became depressed when we moved to another city. I asked my mother if I can talk to someone and she said I don't need to talk to anyone and I never got the help I wanted. I'm sure if I told her that now, it would have had a more positive outcome.

[shootingstar]

After my sister died, I saw my father cry for the first time in my life. It was a relief for us to see this.

He's not your super macho guy, but traditional I suppose. What is more remarkable is that he is probably try to hold himself together since he has cancer for the past 2 years. Yesterday he was trying to sound his normal cheerful self over the phone....in face of tragedy and now, his own mortality. Of course, there's my mother... who is more tempermental, naturally an angrier person.

I don't know what to say to him, but there's no point asking him why he tries to sound cheerful, etc. I know him..because for any of his children to question him on his response to "grief", will probably pull him down pyschologically even more that it could weaken him physically and permanently. So we go along with him..being cheerful for him. He is 82.

He is human but over the decades has really shown enormous personal strength and patience. As a little girl, I wondered why my own father didn't have a deep masculine voice, wasn't into sports at all, liked the arts.. as a child, I thought my father, well was /appeared to be abit wimpy. Short, small-boned, etc.

Right now, it really is a humbling example of mind over the physical. And he doesn't quite realize it himself.