Many of us may connect the concept of mourning to the loss of life. While the passing of a loved one is a time of especially significant grief, we could benefit from taking the time to mourn other losses as well. The perception that a loss is relatively unimportant or typical may become a tendency to minimize our feelings. Developing a broader definition of the word loss and understanding mourning as a passageway to new experiences may help us recognize and attend more fully to our emotional needs.
To mourn is to recognize the feeling of losing something. When we mourn we seek to accept a new situation and thereby create the space in which something new can develop. Thus, mourning may be understood as an action of reorienting ourselves from the way things were to the way things are emerging and will become. By recognizing change as it happens and appreciating that change often involves loss, we can attend authentically to our situation in the present moment. Gaining new understandings of loss and mourning can lead to an appreciation of how these processes may play a role at various moments in life.
Think of a parent watching his or her five-year-old child go to school for the first time. Surely it is a joyous occasion to see a child enter this new phase, and in many ways a parent may feel relieved the child is growing more self-sufficient. At the same time, a parent may feel sad and afraid to face the loss of control over the child’s experiences in the world and grieve the end of the baby years. To miss acknowledging the full complexity of this milestone means that some parents also may miss the chance to process the full range of their feelings and come to a healthy acceptance of their child’s milestone.
Whenever we encounter change, momentous or minor, we have to readjust and accommodate. By remaining open to all our feelings surrounding the change and giving ourselves time and space to connect with those feelings, we increase our ability to move forward in a way that is honest and appropriate. The process of mourning may feel scary and deeply uncomfortable; in this in-between stage, we’ve lost something we previously had and haven’t yet adjusted to our new circumstances. During times of transition, it is important we stay open to opportunities for healing and renewal, being kind and gentle with ourselves, and trusting that change is hard but necessary for growth … and life itself.
-- Erika Rosenberg, M.A.
