I have been corresponding by email with a woman whose husband died a few months ago. She, of course, feels lost and alone with no one to walk with her and no one to guide her though the very scary days ahead.
She has been to five churches looking for someone who does grief counseling and has not found any help and unfortunately not much in the way of interest or concern. Some offered her the name of a widow who might be willing to talk with her, but most did not even have that much to offer.
While she is convinced that she needs a counselor she finally confessed that she has no idea what a grief counselor does or how they do it, and asked me to answer that question for her. What is a grief counselor and what do they do?
I need to say right up front that I do not believe in grief counseling. People in grief are not mentally ill. They do not require someone to figure out whether or not they loved their mother. I believe in grief companioning. Someone to walk beside folks as they make the long journey through the toughest part of their grief. That may be a person who is trained in the grieving processes or often it is a close friend who has the rare ability to just listen. No matter who is chosen for the task there are some things they can offer that I think are vital to the grieving process.
They offer safety. As I have often written in these posts, the bottom line to grief is permission to grieve. If you boil down everything we authors write on the subject it boils down to that word. We need safe places where we can grieve openly as loud and long as we need without being shushed up or thought to be wallowing in our grief. It takes a lot of wailing to grieve a loss and there is a great shortage of wailing places. We need safe people who are comfortable with our wailing. In most cases we must start hiding our tears after just a few weeks, or face the panic of folks who think we have lost our minds.
They offer ears without judgment. Safe people are not there to decide right or wrong. They are not there to judge past or present actions. They are there to offer a safe ear no matter what needs to be expressed or confessed. I often say I have heard enough stuff to make a cynic out of Santa Claus, and the times I am most proud of are the ones when bad things were confessed and it made no difference in how I saw the one doing the confessing.
They offer the chance to tell the story. And to tell it over and over again and again. It is hard to understand how just telling the story over and over can be of much help. The healing really comes from within us. The companion is just a sounding board or a catalyst that helps us work through to our own conclusions and solutions. We get insight as we talk. We get new insight every time we tell the story. It may sound the same to the one doing the listening, but it is not the same to the one doing the talking.
They see but do not fix. The “fixing” has to come from within and it comes slowly. A good companion may see what needs to be thought or done, but try to guide the person to discover the answers for themselves instead of trying to tell and convince. That is the hardest part of being a companion. It is also the most helpful part.
A woman said that her friend was the person who helped her the most when her son died. She said, “I would call her and tell her some long theory I had about why my son died or how I was suppose to feel or react, and she would say, ‘you know, you are right. That is how it is’, the next day I would call and contradict everything I said the day before and she would say, ‘you know, you are right, that is really how it is,’ She did that for two years without even one time pointing out my contradictions. She just walked beside me.”
The slow progress makes it hard to stay connected. One of my major frustrations is how often folks drop out before they have made the discoveries or the progress they need to make. Some of that happens because they feel better and think they are well, only to find out later that the pain returns but they are too embarrassed to come back and admit that. Some drop because it does not seem like I am doing very much. They talk, I listen, they think I should have some magic formulas to lay on them that will make it all go away. There are none. It is a process. It takes a long time. If you are lucky enough to find a companion, stay for the long haul.