Who Grieved it Best? Stop Making Grief a Competition

Grief is a universal, yet deeply personal experience. Like many of you, I've had my fair share of losses and not just from people dying. So for me it's not about comparing losses, but about acknowledging that each loss hits differently for each person. They all hurt in their own way. 

So why do we compare our grief to others? We are not here to compare scars; we're here to learn how to cope with our feelings. We should be supporting each other through the pain, no matter what form the loss is in.

Even though the pain of loss is difficult to navigate so is the healing process. Eventually, our hearts can heal, and we can find love and happiness again, regardless of the type of loss we've experienced. 

Let's remember to encourage and support each other during those times as well. That is the purpose of this podcast. To remind you that love is not dead, just your husband ❤️

And as always, widow your way!

Transcript

Rebecca: 0:37

Hey friend, just a little forewarning this episode. Quality is not going to be that good, so please pair with me. I woke up last week around 4 am and this topic was just so heavy on my heart and my mind after a conversation the day before with my best friend. This was recorded from my phone while laying in the bed, so the sound you hear in the background is my fan and I don't know how to edit that out. So even though the quality is not great, I feel like the message is and I didn't want to re-record it, because we all have those moments where we're laying in the bed thinking about life, and this is one of mine. So I hope you enjoy.

Rebecca: 1:29

I don't know why loss has to be a competition for everyone, why loss has to be compared. Loss is loss. It's a horrible thing to go through. I don't care if you've lost a husband, if you've lost a parent, if you've lost a sibling, a cousin, grandparent, best friend or even a pet. No one knows your relationship with that person. No one knows how deep it goes or how it doesn't. No one knows the impact of the person dying that has on someone. I've heard stories of funerals and your loved one passes away at the funeral, someone comes up and says, oh my god, I loved him so much. He was my best friend and I'm gonna miss him. And you're like what? You weren't his best friend. Of course that's what you're thinking in your head. You're not saying it out loud, but you don't know that relationship. You don't know that connection. You don't know the influence or the impact that your person had on someone else. Impets. Everyone's always talking about someone's pet dying and how that is not the most devastating thing that can happen, but you don't know that person's life. You don't know their situation. You don't know their childhood, you don't know the trauma that they have been through. You don't know capacity that that person has to love. That pet could have been the only thing in the world that has ever showed that person unconditional love. Think about how you would feel If you just lost the only thing in the world that showed you unconditional love. Doesn't matter what that thing was, doesn't matter who that person was. It matters how you feel about them. It's your experience, it's your grief, it's your journey, no one else's.

Rebecca: 4:15

And while we're talking about losses, let's talk about losses of jobs. Yeah, I know you're thinking why am I talking about a loss of a job when I've lost my husband? Again? You don't know the struggles that someone has been through. You don't know what their childhood dreams were. You don't know if they ever thought that they wouldn't be anything in this world, that maybe they never have the opportunity to be educated or go to college. And they finally did. They thought all of this stuff was out of their reach and they worked so hard to get there, or not even go to college but then have a career of their dreams doing what they feel is their definition of success. But then to lose it, to lose it all, to lose the career, to lose the status, to lose the money, to lose the ability to provide for your family the devastation, the impact that that has on someone mentally. It's a loss and it's horrible.

Rebecca: 5:35

And another thing let's talk about the loss of friendships. We all know what our besties mean to us, the things that we go through in our lives. We share things with our best friends that we wouldn't dare tell anyone, not even our husbands. And to lose a friend like that, to lose a relationship like that, where you can always be yourself, you never have to worry about being judged. You never have to pretend to be anything that you're not, because we all know that we are all our most authentic, raw selves with our best friends. Let's talk about losing that relationship. I know firsthand how that feels and it's a loss. You grieve that relationship. You grieve that person even though that person is alive.

Rebecca: 6:46

And another misconception widows and divorcees. I have a friend that has a podcast, the Heavy Pages Journal, and her name is Josie. We're actually gonna do it interviews together here soon and, oh man, we had the best conversation comparing these two things and me and her both, even though our losses were different, we were both experiencing the same thing and talking to her and having these conversations about our feelings it felt so good. It was just like talking to a widow, and I say that only because the only difference between us is that she wasn't a widow. The only difference between me and a pet owner losing their pet is they're not a widow. The only difference from me and someone losing their career in every dream that they ever wanted was they're not a widow. The only difference between me and someone losing a relative other than a husband is they're not a widow.

Rebecca: 8:10

We're always comparing our losses and I'm not downplaying our losses and I'm not saying that your loss is not meaningful or not as worse as someone else's and I hate to even say the word worse but I feel like that's the only way that I can relate this to someone. I feel like this is the only way that I can translate what I'm saying, because even I, sometimes, when I'm talking to someone who's lost somebody and it wasn't a spouse and I think, oh my God, they have it so much worse than I do, like they are grieving so much harder than I am, like, why am I not grieving like that? Why am I not incapacitated like they are? Why am I not outwardly crying and showing my emotion like they are? Why am I not grieving like that? Am I not grieving enough? Did I not love Tom enough to grieve for him like that? That's what I mean.

Rebecca: 9:30

But then it's also on the opposite end. There may be a widow and they're like no, you can't compare that. The loss of my spouse, the loss of my person, is the most horrible loss that you will ever go through in your entire life. It may be for you, and I've said this before and I will say it again the loss of my brother has impacted my life far worse and I'm going to use the word worse than the loss of my husband. And some people may think how can that be? She must have not really loved her husband. But let me tell you, I fucking love Tom Johnson. I went through some shit with him for 18 years and I loved that.

Rebecca: 10:44

So instead of us comparing who grieved it worse, let's see who can grieve it best, who can take the experiences of their losses and show some compassion for someone else who has lost another person or a thing, or a job, or a pet, or their home or their kids. Let's take the thing that was lost out of the equation and let's just look at the grief. Let's just look at the pain that other people are feeling. Let's show compassion. Let them know that we understand how they're feeling, not what they're going through, but how they feel.

Rebecca: 11:48

We all know what it's like when we lose something and we're just angry, we're mad at everyone, we're mad at ourselves, we're mad at God, we're mad at the world.

Rebecca: 12:05

And then we're sad and we're crying and we get depressed and we don't know what to do. We feel lost and then we all know what it's like to live without that thing that we loved so much. We know what it's like to be scared of a life without our person. We know what it's like the first morning that you wake up and you're not thinking about them. We know what it's like when you have no choice but to move forward in life without them. But we also know what it's like when we find happiness again, when we find joy, when we realize that moment in time that we can do it, that we can have a life without them, that we can love again, be loved again. We can have a new spouse, we can have new friendships, we can have a new job, we can get a new pet. There comes a time when our heart opens up and we can have all of those things, because, after all, love is not dead. Just my husband.