“While I am beginning to take the steps to realign my health with myself, I still continue to have days where the grief is overwhelming and I feel the rocks I carry turn into immovable boulders. I'd like to learn ways to lessen those burdens, to turn those boulders into butterflies, and carry what I need to or what I'm ‘stuck’ with the most accessible way I can.”
-Anonymous Reader
Dear Anonymous Reader, I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t know the specifics of what happened, but I relate to the feelings of overwhelm and the longing to lessen the burden of the immovable boulders. It’s a powerful and apt analogy.
Grief is overwhelming. Our brains are literally trying to make sense of a new reality. Have you ever had the experience where you moved a piece of furniture and kept coming back to it as if it were still there? I once moved a nightstand and it took me weeks before I remembered to not put my phone on it as I went to sleep. I was on autopilot, and as I drifted off I would reach over to the table to place my phone on it, and of course, it would drop to the ground.
Mary Frances O’Connell writes beautifully in her book The Grieving Brain about how our brains map to the things we are attached to in order to feel safe. When that thing (whether it’s a person, pet, object, place, job, etc.) is gone, our brains need to re-orient and accept that the focus of our attachment is no longer there. That confusion as we adjust to a new reality can be quite overwhelming.
This is one of the reasons it’s important to give ourselves permission to mourn our losses. It helps the brain understand that a new map must be created.
Rocks Into Immovable Boulders
It’s not uncommon for grief to feel so heavy that we lose motivation, passion, and cognition. If that has become a worry for you, it’s important to know you're not doing anything wrong.
Sometimes, people worry that they are grieving incorrectly because they have mis-interpreted Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' work on the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Many believe these stages are sequential and rush through them, feeling worse when grief seems to intensify. However, Kubler-Ross never intended for these stages to be linear. Grievers move in and out of these stages in a non-linear fashion. There are also additional frameworks and studies identifying other stages of grief, like meaning-making.
What I want to share with you right now is that these immovable boulders—your thoughts and feelings—are normal and reflect the depth of your attachment to what was lost. Consider this quote which I personally found helpful:
“Anything you have you can lose; anything you are attached to, you can be separated from; anything you love can be taken away from you. Yet if you really have nothing to lose, you have nothing.”
-Richard Kalish, Author “The Psychology of Human Behavior”
Your use of the phrasing “immovable” boulders of grief suggests you had much to lose. This profound sense of loss can manifest in various ways.
One common experience is grief "spikes," where you might function well one day and struggle to get out of bed the next.
While many talk about the challenges of the first year after a loss, the hard truth is that grief spikes can happen anytime, even years later.
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How to Turn Boulders Into Butterflies
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