Is Grief really sadness?

For most of my life, and even more so in the years since I started working as a death doula, Grief has almost always been associated with sadness. Occasional anger, on rare occasions, apathy or numbness.

And if that is what Grief is, then of course it would make sense that people would absolutely want to get "over it" as soon as possible. No one wants to feel those things any longer than they "have" to.

But is Grief really a synonym for sadness? An emotion that also sometimes also gets expressed as anger?

For that matter, is Grief even an emotion?

Let us consider this from the perspective of one of my favorite questions: What else might be possible?

What if Grief was not an emotion? What if, instead, Grief was a verb. What if it is what you DO rather than what you feel?

I first heard this idea from my mentor, Stephen Jenkinson. It took a while to feel into what he was saying, longer still for it to take hold and begin to have its way with me. For it to be the way I engage with Grief.

To draw a comparison, I think that most of us would agree that Love is not an emotion, not really. We do love. We feel a whole gamut of emotions while we are loving, for certain. We also do loving things for those we love.

And those emotions include ones like anger, frustration, and other not-so-warm-and-fuzzy emotions. A parent will get angry at a child for taking a dangerous risk not because they want to be angry, but because they love them and want to protect them.

Love, then, is a series of emotions and actions we take when there is someone (or something) in our life that we, well, wish to express love towards.

And so it is with Grief. In fact, I would argue that the emotions and actions we might experience and take while Grieving are exactly the same. Why?

Well, referring again to my mentor and something he has said often: Grief is loving someone after they have died. Love is grieving for them while they are alive. (More on this in a later post).

So, that anger you feel that your spouse was diagnosed with a terminal disease? Grief. The frustration you feel at no longer being able to travel with them? Grief. The happiness you feel when you see a photo of that trip you took? Grief. And, of course, those tears you cry at the loss of the ability to hold their hand? Also, grief.

When we allow Grief to be all that it is, maybe we allow ourselves to embrace our grief, knowing that as long as we are grieving, we are still loving that person.

And what a gift it is to have loved in such a way to grieve for them, maybe even forever.