In 2020, I broke my ankle hauling a bag of mulch from the car to the front yard.

In a snap (literally), my life changed.

First came the intense pain and total immobility. Then, a team of paramedics hauled me out of my yard and delivered me to the closest ER.

Surgery was next, followed by a couple of days of drug-hazed post-op recovery.

Then, things got real.

I had to quickly learn to navigate my world minus a limb.

I learned to live without things I took for granted. No more running upstairs for a sweater or carrying my coffee to my office.

I learned creative ways for suddenly challenging tasks, such as taking a shower or getting out of a chair.

A perpetual wanderer, I learned to sit and stay put. Hours in a chair. Weeks in my house.

And NONE OF THIS actually fixed my ankle.

The fact is my bones mended themselves. All my efforts simply protected them as they did their healing work.

Even when we doubt our ability to heal, our bodies never do. Our hearts keep beating. Our lungs continue to yearn for breath. So just breathe. And let yourself transform. ~ Claire Bidwell Smith, Conscious Grieving

It took patience and commitment. And time.

So much time!

But it was my only choice if I wanted to walk on two feet again.

Broken Hearts

In some ways, a broken heart is like a broken bone.

There’s immediate, immobilizing pain.

Your life is massively disrupted. Learning to live without your loved one presents a steep learning curve.

And grief requires. So much time.

More than you ever imagine.

And…

In other ways, a broken heart is much worse.

With my ankle, my surgeon could tell me what to expect. He described the pain I’d feel and how we’d manage it. He offered a straightforward regimen and useful tips for coping. He estimated a timeline for getting me back on my feet.

A grieving person seldom has such expert guidance.

No one can predict how you’ll get through your grief. Or how long will it take.

And there’s little awareness that grievers need support and accommodation.

During recovery, I wore a boot in public. People knew how to clear a path or hold a door for me.

But, to most people, a grieving person looks fine. They’ll assume you’re better long before you are.

Meanwhile, you have doubts that you will ever get better.

No doctor can confidently give you a timeline. Nor can they offer a routine protocol for recovery.

It’s not like an x-ray can show that your heart’s on the mend.

These are the reasons that healing from loss is profoundly frustrating.

The good news is, there are ways to make grieving more bearable.

Manage Expectations

My clients come to grief work with determination and grit. They’re ready to do the hard work. Feel the painful feelings.

They’re bargaining: “If I throw myself into suffering, let it end quickly and be gone forever.”

Unfortunately, healing from loss isn’t clean and linear. It doesn’t move through stages that can be checked off to monitor progress.

Grief healing is messy. It starts with an unrelenting string of bad days. Then there are flickers of feeling normal. You have some good moments. Hours. Days. Eventually, weeks.

We all want to do something to mitigate the pain of loss or to turn grief into something positive, to find a silver lining in the clouds. But I believe there is real value in just standing there, being still, being sad. ~ John Green, Our Fault In The Stars

You become cautiously hopeful that an end is in sight for your grieving.

Until you encounter the Valentine’s Day display at your grocery store and become completely undone.

And now, you feel stuck. That you’re going backwards. Again.

This is the pain of resistance.

Resistance to the long and complicated process of grieving. Resistance to the time it takes. The patience it requires. To the intensity of the emotions you must hold.

Grief is not optional. But resistance is.

You’ll feel so much better if you let go of your grieving timeline. Drop your unrealistic assumptions and false beliefs about how grief should work.

And allow grief to be what it is.

But how, exactly, do you “allow grief?”

You mourn. That is, you express your grief, as often and in as many ways as possible.

Talk to others. Tell your story of loss. Express your feelings through music and art.

Journal about your grief. Research shows journalling is particularly effective in helping people cope with difficult emotions.

Ironically, the best way to relieve your grief is to pay attention to it.

Assess Your Progress

You aren’t going to suddenly recover from grief. You won’t wake up one day and realize you’re over your loss.

Grief healing is practically imperceptible, unless you know what to look for. Here are some common signs, according to grief therapist and educator Alan Wolfelt:

• Your eating and sleeping patterns are returning to normal.
• You’re becoming less preoccupied with thoughts of your person.
• You have more moments of enjoyment throughout your day.
• You’re making new friends.
• You realize you can both live a meaningful life and remember your loved one.
• You’re more organized.
• You start making plans for the future.
• You recognize that you’re adapting to change.
• You feel less distressed that things aren’t as they used to be.
• You’re realizing you will survive your loss.
• You discover new things about yourself that you value (new strengths; new interests).
• You have a renewed sense of life purpose.
• You’re starting to understand that the pain of loss is simply part of loving others.
• Wolfelt suggests doing a self-check for these signs on a regular basis. Keep a record of progress in your journal.

Be persistent about this self-assessment. There won’t be many signs at first. So, write down each glimmer, no matter how faint. Eventually, Wolfelt wrote, you’ll start to sense “divine momentum.”  Your faith in life after loss will grow exponentially.

If you have a setback, pull out your journal. It will remind you how far you’ve come.

Borrowing Hope

We need good grief companions because we need to borrow their hope.

A skilled grief companion is okay when you’re not okay.

They can hold space for your difficult experience. They recognize it’s how you get through it.

They trust the process, even when you can’t.

They’re also your objective observers. They’ll notice your progress before you do. They’ll remind you of how far you’ve come when you forget.

If you stick with your good grief companions, you’ll come to believe what they already know: that you’ll eventually find your way to the other side of grief.

Getting to Fine

Grieving doesn’t lead you to recovery. You’ll never get back to “normal.”

Grieving gets you to the place where you know you can survive in your new reality.

Healing doesn’t mean the loss didn’t happen. It means that it no longer controls us ~ David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

My right ankle isn’t the same. It aches in cold weather. It has a damaged nerve that can no longer tolerate some of my shoes.

But my ankle works fine now. It gets me where I want to go. I can do all that I need and want to do.

When a loved one dies, your life will never be the same.

But it won’t be unbearable forever.

You’ll be able to handle the lingering memories and moments of sadness. These will soften in time and become bittersweet reminders of your loved one.

That’s the miracle of the mended heart.

It is transformed, through grieving, to hold your lost loved one close while gently moving you back into the current of life.

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