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Essays on grief
CONCEPT OF grief
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Essays on grief
CONCEPT OF grief
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Recommended: Essays on grief
Processing grief is a highly personal and complex experience that can take many different forms, requiring patience, compassion, and support from oneself and others to navigate it. This theme of grief is shown through the book “Clap When You Land,” by Elizabeth Acevedo. Two different teenage girls, Camino and Yahaira come from very different backgrounds but must both deal with the death of their same father in a sudden plane crash. In “Clap When You Land,” author Elizabeth Acevedo portrays the theme of grief as a transformative process that challenges the characters’ identities and relationships, highlighting the complexities of mourning and the importance of communal support in healing. Grief is dealt with in many different ways as shown
Grief is a complex and multifaceted emotion that is an inherent part of the human experience. It manifests in various forms, ranging from the death of a loved one to the loss of a way of life, and it impacts individuals differently. In Richard Wagamese's novel Indian Horse and James Joyce's short story Eveline, grief plays a significant role in shaping the lives of the main characters. Through their narratives, these works explore the nature and role of grief as a transformative force, influencing the characters' actions, decisions, and perceptions of the world around them.
Grief, the universal process of mourning, materializes differently in each person. Some swiftly overcome it, able to accept their loss and move on. Others concede to despair and develop Complicated Grief Disorder: “a period of mourning after a loss…that exceeds six months and is expressed through…a maladjustment and lack of acceptance of death, social isolation and suicidal tendencies” (Avrutin para. 5). Ethan Frome, the protagonist of Edith Wharton’s novella of the same name, continually struggles with this particular disorder.
Written by doctors and experts on the subject of grief and published on Psychiatry Online, they recognize that “Major depressive disorder has several overlapping characteristics with prolonged grief disorder, including sadness, crying, social isolation and withdrawal”(1). Grief hit Tita the hardest after Nacha’s untimely death. “Her unfortunate death had left Tita in a very deep depression. With Nacha dead she was completely alone. It was as if her real mother had died”(Esquivel 48).
The substantial influence of how individuals perceive grief in sensitive situations is significant. The perception of grief can vary greatly, with some experiencing significant life changes and others remaining in denial, unable to acknowledge the reality of their losses. In the story Blood Knots by Mallory Burton, the author develops the idea that the environment an individual is raised in has a large impact on the way they respond to grieving. In other words, the environment influences numerous factors, especially the response to grief. This ideology is evident in the short story as the way the protagonist responds to her father’s death reveals a glimpse of the environment of her upbringing and how it affected her processing the death of
According to Broderick, Blewitt, (2015) there is no correct way to grief, everyone one deals with the loss of a loved one in their own ways. For example, recently my family has lost a member of our family, our beloved dog, Toby, died. Everyone in the family is handing Toby’s death differently, my mom and aunt and are looking at pictures of him and crying while my grandmother and I are trying to remember the good times we had, by swapping stories and experiences with him. This week I am working with a close-knit Italian-American family, which consists of Isabelle (wife/mother), Paul (oldest son), Sophia, and twins Lenore and Joseph. Recently this family has suffered the loss of Victor, the family patriarch, and Isabel's husband for 53 years.
Adult Grief Group- 9 week closed group for adults ages 18+ages. The group goes through each step of grief along with a focus on specific struggles such as holidays, change of roles after death of l loved one and spiritual reflection. The groups are set up for 8 clients per clinician all groups(if more than one) for 20 min Psycho education then splints into the groups to provide time for each client to share and seek peer support. This is an extensive program designed to guide a individual through grief work to a place of hope beyond grief. I usually dedicate one week to a project that includes art Therapy for adults.
Memories can influence a person and shape them into who they become later in life. When a person loses someone important in their life, they cope with those feelings in different ways. The differences people feel are fairly obvious, but the similarities of those memories are sometimes concealed. “Mud”, written by Geoffrey Forsyth and “Loving the Dead”, written by Ronald F. Currie Jr. gives us two examples of how people cope with the loss of a loved one.
That particular adversity is melancholia, which is when an individual is unable to fully recuperate from a loss and consequently their lives remain stagnant as they never seem to exit the grieving mode. This translates to the tension between mobility and immobility that each individual thus experiences. To say that there is a precise manner in which an individual should lament in would be flawed, because every individual approaches life at a different kind of lens. I will be discussing this in terms of the causes and the consequences of grief and the detailed ways in which the individuals deal with the grief. One could say that the most evident origin of grief in this chapter is fixed around the usage of alcohol.
After a death or loss of something close, people usually react similarly by going through the five stages of grief. These stages include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. During a death of my Great Aunt, my family went through the stages of grief. I was close with her when I was younger, but I do not have many memories I remember with her so I did not experience much grief. On the other hand, my Great Uncle went through a lot of grief since she was his older sister.
Anticipatory grief is the form of grief that occurs when there is an opportunity to anticipate the death of a loved one (or oneself). It is different from unanticipated grief in the amount of time to "look forward" to death and in its form. It may be affected by such things as the duration and pattern of the illness, by concurrent stresses (financial, social, physical, emotional, developmental, etc.) , periods of uncertainty and (sometimes dreaded) certainty, interactions with sometimes incomprehensible medical personnel, varying support from others. Anticipatory grief involves life from the past, present and that of the future for both the patient and their loved ones.
Parkes (1996) has written that there is an optimal level of grieving for each individual and that it is important for those feelings to be allowed expression. The counsellor who used a psychodynamic approach mostly would perhaps be more swift to explore how earlier experiences of loss and hopelessness were affecting the current experience of loss and hopelessness. Hope inspiration seemed to be achieved more as a result of the presence of firm qualities in the counsellor and the application of such qualities, rather than as a result of refined techniques. Bereavement counselling for individuals experiencing a complicated grief reaction appears to require a particular interpersonal environment or atmosphere. Rogers (1952) is most noted for suggesting the necessary and sufficient conditions that make up such an interpersonal counselling environment.
Thus, by considering not only facts but also a canvas of traditions, a psychologist acquires an opportunity to guide a person with depression or oppression. He gains an opportunity to provide another perspective for his patient which would become a way to unburden him or her. Nonetheless, to master the spiritual approach to grief psychotherapy, a psychologist has to discover the various kinds of mourning the loss. Considering that some cultures differ dramatically from the common American idea of the funeral, a psychotherapist has to maneuver by defining main spiritual rules of death in the culture to which the client belongs (Papalia and Olds, 2012, p.618).
On the first day of the intensive, loss was introduced and described as ‘pervasive, but always resulting in a deprivation of some kind; we no longer have someone or something we used to have’ (Huang, 2018a). It was also stated that ‘we all are subject to many “little deaths” and the subsequent lessons they teach us, including giving up our impossible expectations of others and ourselves’ (Huang, 2018a). These statements allowed me to reflect on the nature of grief, loss and bereavement. I entered the intensive with a pre-existing understanding of what would be covered, and in the first few slides, it was made clear to me that my perception of grief and loss was far too narrow for what I was about to experience. I was able to analyse the small losses and ‘deaths’ that had occurred in my life and recognise them through the lens of grief.
To be able to know how to deal with the losses that are discussed in the following chapters, it is important to have a clearer understanding of loss and grief and how to cope with grief following