Understanding Grief Stages: Metaphors To Find Your Path After Loss
We all know that grief is a complex beast. It is a subject most people like to avoid. Not many people want to dwell on grief and dive into it to understand it.
We just want to get through it.
Some of us want to avoid it. We want to never have to experience it.
Most of us have never experienced the level of grief that we experience when we lose our spouse.
The Grief Process
Then there’s not just the loss, but there’s the time period that comes after it.
Many go through a period of shock. A period of survival mode. A period of major upheaval and instability. This is normal.
And that time varies for each individual. Some take longer than others to navigate survival mode, depending on the situation. We’re all in a rush to not feel the way we do. We want to move as quickly as possible through grief and just “get it over with, dammit”.
Once you start to move out of survival mode and the fog starts to lift, you start to get your footing again. You might not feel “normal” yet, but you start to adjust to the new life you’re living without your person in it.
You start to even make plans for the future.
You start to make some changes that reflect this new life that you’re trying to build for yourself.
You may change jobs, change friends, change your hair, change your home, change your car.
Your new life is slowly starting to take shape. And you begin to feel peace and calm again.
Your life is no longer a frantic jump from day to day, trying to keep your head above water. You feel more relaxed and more settled into this next version of yourself that you are comfortable with.
You start to appreciate yourself more for the hard time that you’ve gotten through. You start to LOVE yourself. What’s better than that?! You LOVE yourself for being amazing and awesome and resilient. You realize that you are a badass.
That love for yourself begins to spread to everyone around you. Instead of feeling like putting yourself in a cocoon, hiding from everyone and everything, you thrive on expansion and new experiences.
You come alive!
You open yourself up to new friendships, new adventures, to joy, to beauty, to appreciation, and reverence, to an understanding that life is short and precious and not to be wasted.
You become the best version of yourself that you can possibly be.
Now, that was a very simplified story of the pathway of grief. The 2 minute version, summed up very quickly.
Grief Stages: A Metaphor For Crossing Emotional Bridges
When I talk about grief and the recovery time after loss in my group coaching programs, I usually use a metaphor of walking across a bridge. I have my group close their eyes and imagine a bridge, any version of a bridge they want to think about. But I have them picture the bridge on a foggy day. So as they walk across this bridge, they have no idea where the middle is.
Or, more importantly, the end of the bridge.
They don’t know how much further they have to walk until they reach the end.
On their bridge they encounter hurdles, roadblocks that get in the way that they have to work around.
Eventually, the fog starts to clear. They can see the end is getting near as they keep making their way, step by step across the bridge. Until they finally reach the end and find themselves on solid ground. But, their road doesn’t stop there.
It keeps going.
They don’t just stop when they step off the bridge. There are still miles and miles of path in front of them. But there’s no fog anymore. They’ve found their footing. They can see the path and they feel more comfortable with their stride through life.
And they feel like, if they can make it across that treacherous foggy bridge, they can honestly make it through anything.
Grief Stages: Sailing Into Smoother Waters
Metaphors are helpful. There’s another one that I want to share.
It’s called the ‘sailboat metaphor”. The sailboat metaphor is a way of thinking about life that compares human experience to sailing a boat. It’s used to help people understand themselves, understand the journey through life with all of its ups and downs, and helps people tap into their potential for growth.
Let me break this down into what the sailboat metaphor says.
While you read through this post, you can envision this sailboat, your own sailboat, however you want that to look. This is your boat. You get to design it.
The water represents all of the different areas of your life that you have to navigate, such as work and home. Just like a sailboat navigates through different bodies of water, sometimes it’s rough seas and sometimes it’s calm and still. We also encounter different challenges and also opportunities along the way.
The steering wheel represents our values. They are the guiding principles that direct our course. When we’re faced with something difficult and challenging, our values help us stay true to ourselves and guide us the way to how we react to challenges. This is how we make our day to day choices.
The holes in the boat. There are holes in the bottom of the boat. These are our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities. Our personal weaknesses can hinder our progress. These weaknesses cause our boat to leak and take on water. What are these weaknesses? Well, they can be things like insecurity. Self-doubt. Self-hate.
A disconnected feeling from others, or extreme isolation. Feelings of anxiousness.
But here’s the good news.
These are things we can acknowledge and address.
These are weaknesses that we can work on to improve, of course. We can work on our limitations and our limiting beliefs and change them. We can try to reduce the number of holes in the boat as much as possible, to keep ourselves afloat.
The sail of the boat represents our strengths, the skills and knowledge that help propel us forward. We all have unique strengths that we can harness to help us get through and get to where we want to go.
The destination is, of course, our goal that we want to reach. It’s our desires and our aspirations. It’s what we shoot for. It’s what we strive for. Your goals give you the sense of direction and purpose.
But it’s all of these components working together that make the difference.
You see, we can work on patching and fixing the holes in the boat, our insecurities and hangups.
But you’re still not gonna go anywhere if you don’t open the sails, right?
It’s not just enough to be safe and secure, because you’re still just going to sit there. You can’t just go from a sinking ship to patching it up, because you’re still not moving toward your destination.
You have to open the sail.
Once you can open the sail and move forward with vulnerability and flexibility, moving against any wind and waves that you encounter, you start to move in a purposeful direction, with appreciation, with confidence, with love for others and for yourself.
You have a new sense of adventurous spirit in you, ready to form new connections and new relationships, wherever that may take you. You find a renewed drive to embrace life and all that comes your way, even if that means braving big waves and windy days.
There’s a quote that I love. I’ve actually done a podcast episode about this quote on Widow 180: The Podcast. The quote by John A. Shedd goes: "A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are built for". It emphasizes that true potential and purpose lie in venturing beyond comfort zones and taking risks, rather than remaining stagnant.
The water, the steering wheel, the sail, the holes in the boat, the destination.
That’s the sailboat metaphor. You have to open those sails or else you just won’t go anywhere.
You won’t grow as a person. You’ll stay stuck. You have to get outside of your comfort zone.
Again, this is may be a simplified little visualization exercise, but it paints a pretty accurate picture of the path you’re on, that we’re all on, navigating through grief as best as we can.
Maybe you’re on the bridge. Maybe you’re on the boat.
Each of us must navigate our own unique journey. Either way, this is YOUR life. You are the captain of your own ship.
You are in control of it. You have all the skills you need to move through life with grace and confidence. I know you do!
I believe in you.
I know you can get through this.
I hope these two little metaphors give you a better understanding. More importantly, the understanding that there’s so much more path in front of you. And so many more oceans to explore. So, don’t ever give up!
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