A group was studying the value of a listening ear. They had viewed the video we produced called The Power Of Presence. The discussion was open and almost everyone was sharing from their own experiences in either listening to someone or someone listening to them. I don’t know that an epiphany happened but one woman seemed to have a sudden revelation and shared it.

She had worked as a responder for an ambulance company and was just finishing her shift when the call came that a bomb had exploded at the federal building in downtown Oklahoma City. Thei went there immediately and worked non stop for many more hours without relief. She told of the horror she witnessed that she still could not get out of her mind. She could not go back to that line of work even though it had been her life. Most of her fellow workers have long since changed occupations as well and many of them have developed serious substance abuse problems, social issues, job loss, and divorce. 

She, and her fellow workers had gone through debriefings and counseling that somehow seemed to miss. As she talked it seemed to dawn on her why the counseling missed. She suddenly blurted out, “No one asked me how I felt. They all asked about what I saw and seemed to want me to tell each experience in great detail, but no one asked me how I felt.” 

She put her finger on the basic need of the grief journey. We need to be understood. Someone needs to ask us how we feel and then listen to what we tell them. This is true in life itself, not just in grief. Basically we want to be understood. All of us have feelings or thoughts we dare not share but would give almost anything if we could share and someone simply understand why we thought or felt the way we do. There is power there no one can really describe.

A woman heard me talk about this at a conference and told me she now understood what had happened to her. Her son was shot at a party. The shooting happened because someone was drinking and playing with a gun. The gun discharged and her son died. She said:

I had a terrible time with the word accident. It was more than just an accident, but when I would say that my friends and family would say, "well do you think he was murdered?" I would say no, I did not think that but it was more than an accident. I could not get past that and no one seemed to grasp what I was saying. Finally I went to see one of my son’s friends who was there that night. The friend happened to be paraplegic and was in a wheel chair. When I arrived he seemed to tense up and had his arms up almost in a defensive position. His name was John and I said, John, I’m having a hard time with the term accident. John immediately dropped his arms and sighed “so am I." I began to get well that day. Someone understood.

The grief journey needs safe companions who will listen and seek to understand. They can’t really understand because they are listening to us try to say with words what we feel inside of our beings and words just won’t cover that very well, but if they simply try to understand and accept what we feel without trying to change or direct our feelings something wonderful happens inside of us. I am not sure that something wonderful really happens until someone understands. 

I am enjoying those who take advantage of my email and tell me their stories. I am sure the load will get too large for me to handle but until it does, I will keep trying to answer. I have not sent out a single answer that did as much good as the telling the story did for the one who wrote the email. Telling someone how we feel and having those feelings accepted is vital to healing.

So far in my grief journey, I have found far more people willing to interpret how I feel, tell me what I should feel, and instruct me on what will be the next step on the journey, and very few, well actually none, who will just listen and then say what I think are the most comforting words that can be said to someone in grief, "That must really hurt." Those words mean someone understands.