Recent grief
Recent grief occurs when you have lost someone that is dear to you. Grief is natural when someone dies. It is important to allow yourself to mourn: to cry, to speak about the deceased, and to remember the deceased together with others.
People often have a hard time receiving and treating those in grief. You can feel lonely and notice that no one else talk about the deceased. Some people avoid you and make a detour when they see you. Within the family it is common to protect each other, specially the children, by not speaking of the missing person even though the deceased is in everyone’s minds. This causes a poorer contact between family members – a further loss.
Your surroundings and yourself believe that after the funeral and 2-3 months, things should start feeling better. This is rarely the case. The first three months everything feels unreal and confusing. You do not understand. You are ”in the mist”. After four months the grief grows more profound. It is very important that you allow yourself to go through this stage.
Our opinion is that recent grief lasts for 1-2 years.
Allow yourself to feel what you are feeling and to think what you are thinking. There is not a rush to remove personal possessions; in the contrary there can be a risk to clear them away to fast. It is important not to avoid what is painful, to look at photographs and so forth. Take things in your own pace and not in the pace of the people around you. The surroundings often have many and differing opinions and are rarely satisfied with a mourner. You cry too much or you cry too little, you never go out or you go out to early and too much…
Frozen/Complicated grief
A frozen, deadlocked grief is when you have not been able to mourn properly and stay in the grief’s feelings. Instead, you have put a lid on.
You have an infected wound full of pus inside of you that you have put a thick crust on. You do not live fully. You are never really happy. You might have lost your sexual feelings. You cry but it does not show. You feel that you are not able to move on. Perhaps you did not experience taking proper goodbye of the deceased. This grief, even though it might have been 10-20 years sincethe loss, can be liberated.
You need to go into the Darkness to find the Light. In the Dark you may need guidance. The Light is the antithesis of the Dark, as Life is to Death. They both need to exist. There cannot be Life without Death, nor Light without Darkness.