[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 6: Grief Support]

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 09:32:53PM -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> It sounds like the US does not have a monopoly on telling people what they 
> should be feeling! I wonder how this sort of thing came about. To me it's 
> akin to denying our worth as humans. There is no such thing as "right" 
> or "wrong" feelings; they are what they are. What we do about them is a 
> separate decision; but denying them in the first place seems wrong, even 
> cruel.

I think, in cultures where people assume that the loved one has gone to
Heaven (or equivalent), there is an attitude by those who haven't
experienced the death of a loved one, that one isn't supposed to grieve
for the death of a loved one, because that shows a "lack of faith".  As
if the grief was caused by a fear that the loved one isn't in heaven, or
a disbelief that Heaven is better than Earth, but that's not it at all.

We grieve because *we miss them terribly*.  They aren't there with us
any more.  It doesn't matter if the parting is temporary or permanent,
it is still a parting, and it *hurts*.  Okay, so if one has a faith, one
has a hope mixed in there (there's the "faith") but to deny the pain
that one is feeling, is to deny the love that one had for the person who
is gone.

Kathryn Andersen
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