A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Becky,

Thanks for your note, your absolute honesty, and your question about the question that keeps haunting you.

One of the most difficult things in the area of grief is the intellectual truth that we are not supposed to have to bury our children.

The problem is that the death of a child, like all other losses, is emotional not intellectual.

Once you make the statement that you’re not suppose to have to bury your children, it can make emotional recovery seem unattainable, and you have trapped yourself to a life of pain. In effect you are then comparing an intellectual fact with the normal and natural emotional reaction to the death. You can’t reconcile those two things because they are not comparable.

The founder of our Institute, John W. James, was brought to his knees 37 years ago when his three day old son died. Like you, he went right to that intellectual idea that we’re not supposed to bury our children. But he soon realized that the truth of that was keeping him stuck and not helping or even allowing him to deal with his broken heart, and all the hopes, dreams, and expectations he had had for his son’s life and his life with him.

And like you, he did not want to go on with the pain that was making every moment of his life impossible, and with the idea that he might have to stay in pain for another 30 or 40 years. So he had to find a way to feel better or he was going to check out. The death of his son is what propelled him to find a way to recover so he could stay alive.

As a byproduct of the odyssey John went on to dissever how he could become emotionally complete with his son who had died, he created what we now call the Grief Recovery Method, and wrote and self-published the first version of The Grief Recovery Handbook. The Handbook is a detailed process that helps anyone who’s willing become emotionally complete with someone important to them who has died. No matter how the death occurred or the age of the person who died.

Please go to the library or bookstore and get a copy of The Grief Recovery Handbook. As you read it and take the actions it outlines, you’ll start to feel a shift which will help you stop from getting stuck in the loop with that question that repeats over and over. You will still miss her and be sad from time to time, because you are a human being.

You will also learn and realize that guilt implies intent to harm, which is not accurate for you, so feeling guilty for being the one who’s alive is not a truthful or helpful idea.

From our hearts to yours,

Russell And John