The work you have to do is related to your unfinished emotional business in order to find your way out of darkness and embrace the new and different lifestyle that you are now forced to live. Taking the time work through all aspects of your experience in the relationship and taking ownership of your pain is important. It does not mean you will forget the person or the experience. Working through your pain doesn’t take away responsibility by anyone who contributed in any manner to the loss you have
experienced. In fact, there will be times you will be triggered by something in the here and now and experience emotional pain of past loss [es]. By acknowledging any needs that were met as well as those that were not met one can move into living again even though life will be forever different.
Most people in western society have been taught to ‘get over’ a loss, to ‘pull oneself up by the bootstraps’, to ‘bury the loss’ to the recesses of the mind and ‘keep busy’ because feeling will cause one to ‘die’. In our society, grief is uncomfortable and instead of allowing those who are grieving to tell their story as often as they need, and permit them to experience their loss in their own unique manner, we say things that are very unhelpful sending a message to the grieving person to ‘grieve alone’.
People in western society often hide behind clichés to hide their sense of helplessness while trying to be helpful. Statements such as ‘get over it, it’s been a year’ cause the person experiencing the loss to cringe inside and retreat behind ‘I’m fine’ when, in fact, there are Feelings Inside Not Expressed. Other clichés that are unhelpful include such statements as: ‘he’s in a better place’; ‘he didn’t suffer’; ‘you’ll find a better man and get married again’; ‘you can always get another cat’; ‘it had a good life’ ‘You had [him/her] for ____ years [you fill in the blank].