We throw the word around so often in so many differing settings that perhaps a short thought about what grief really is might prove helpful. My definition of grief is: Grief is our natural response to any loss.

I think there are two key words in that definition. The first is the word any. Any loss causes a grief response inside of us. Even simple things like loosing a billfold or a cell phone results in grief. If a billfold is lost we will even go through some of the so called "stages" we once used to describe the grieving experience. We will deny that the billfold is lost, we will conjure up all of the possible and some impossible places where we could have just left it. On the dresser where we always keep our stuff. In the car pocket where we have never ever put it before, but maybe this time. When all the possibilities are gone and we realize the billfold is gone, there is a hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. That is grief. Nothing like the grief following the death of a loved one, but the response of grief just the same. Grief experiences are a constant part of our lives. Some hardly noticed. Some with minor and short term impact. Some that drive us to our knees and impact the rest of our lives.

There is grief in displacement. I have promised myself to one day try to study the impact moving has on families. In the brief work I have done, I have concluded that displacement leaves a sense of loss even if the move is an upward mobile move to a dream city. We leave things such as social contacts and security behind and have no way of grieving the loss. How can a wife for example grieve when the husband has a promotion to the head office? One executive told me he had moved seventeen times in twenty years. I asked him what that had cost him and he said, "A wife and three kids." 

There certainly is grief in divorce. It can be very similar to the grief response following a death, and yet they are very different and each needs its own type of working through. I do not think there is any way to compare the pain or the impact between the grief of divorce and the grief of death. I wish we could quit comparing pains and learn to reach out to all people who hurt no matter how deep we think the pain is or should be. If folks hurt, they need someone to care.

And, of course, there is grief following a death. One of the blogs in this series deals with the different dimensions in some of the types of deaths we face. All that says is, grief may vary in some ways, but when hurts happen, grief happens.

The other key word is Natural. Grief is the natural response to any loss. That is my soap box. From the day a mother, whose daughter had just died, said "Don't take my grief away from me" until this day, I have been on my soap box trying to convey the idea that there is a natural response built into us that is designed to walk us through the grief we encounter in our lives. Grief is nature's way of healing a broken heart. 

Grief is a natural and healthy response to loss or pain. I saw a little boy get his hand stepped on in a grocery store. His wails could be heard all over the store and his mother was embarrassed. She clamped her hand over his mouth and demanded that he stop crying. She wanted to stop the only process the boy had for getting past the experience. His pain would go away in time, but the trauma needed to be hollered away. What is more natural for a little boy than wailing when his hand has been stomped? What else gets the feelings and hurt out? A stifling hand across the mouth certainly won't do it.

The best thing to do with grief is grieve. You will read that in these blogs until you think that is the only sentence I know, but it happens to be the foundation stone of what I understand about grief. We are hurt so we respond. It is as natural and normal as that.

The problem is there are far too many mommies trying to put their hands over our mouths and stifling our cries. It is hard to find places and people who will be comfortable letting us grieve openly and unashamedly. There are too many efforts to take our grief away instead of allowing the process to fulfill its mission. Too often friends and family panic at our tears and start offering medications to "calm us" down or diversions to distract our attention, or they just avoid us so they won't have to hear us.

Through it all, we need to fight for the right to let the natural responses to pain lead us through the deep valleys of grief like the process is designed to do.