PART ONE OF TWO
The Faces of Grief
If you have just suffered a major loss, you have probably begun the emotional roller coaster ride of feeling your own grief. Your grief—which descends on you as overwhelming feelings of loss—can reveal itself through several faces that can leave you suffering in any number of ways. Here are a few.
Suffering a major loss can leave you with a broken heart.
When you say you are heartbroken, you may be using a metaphor, but what you are experiencing is real suffering and grief. Heartbreak over a major loss causes excruciating pain. Overwhelming grief can make it hard to breathe. It can leave you physically and emotionally exhausted.
Suffering a major loss can leave you struggling spiritually with a lot of unanswered questions.
Major losses usually make no sense—the loss of a home caused by fire, natural disasters, the divorce between two people who once loved each other, the death of a loved one, or a global tragedy like the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 that brought financial disaster, uncertainty, and loss to so many. It all seems so cruel, wrong, and unfair. You may even question where God is during all this. That’s a natural response. Tragic losses tend to cause fear and shake one’s faith.
Suffering a major loss can leave you feeling lost, alone, and incomplete.
Grieving a deep loss can also shake you at the very core of your being. Suffering a loss, especially the loss of a loved one, can make you feel that a part of you has been torn away. It can seem like your loss has left a hole in your heart. You may even feel a loss of identity, a sense of incompleteness, and the feeling that you are no longer a whole person. Emotionally disconnected, you may feel adrift, without an emotional anchor.
Suffering a major loss can leave you deprived of emotional peace of mind.
Grieving can cause emotional distress. Disheartened, you may feel an inward discontentment and frustration. You may find it difficult to rest or sleep.
