Things Men Ought to Grieve (And Really Don’t Know How)
SUMMARY: Men have difficulty pinpointing and giving priority to areas where grief is present in daily life. In this article numerous areas of loss and hurt are offered to help identify painful areas that impact decision-making and relationships. An invitation is offered to reduce the ways these grief-events hinder fullness of life and offer men a fresh way forward.
Most Men Protest and Disagree
Imagine a conversation that is an amalgamation of several that I’ve had and overheard in recent months. They seem to revolve on some common ideas: What do I have to be sad about? No pain no gain – push through it. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Life happens. What can I do about what I can’t do anything about? I’ve learned to accept tough things happen.
Critic: Gosh, Mike. Why all this focus on the negative and dark?! Is it okay to feel okay or good once in a while? Let’s get on living with the positive and what we can change and do something about that!
Mike: I get it. This is painful, dark and disruptive. Nothing helpful or good seems to come from any of it. It ruins whole days, even weeks. To grieve is to feel stuck. It is lingering, not doing, remaining.
Critic: The whole world feels like a dark, grief-filled place. Bad stuff is constantly happening. Read the news! Look at all the crime! You want me to feel grief, it’s everywhere and where would I ever stop? There’s too much!
Mike: Again, you’re right. It’s everywhere. Top-rated streaming shows offer it as entertainment in stereo-color. Click-focused news feeds lure us to the dark, ugly and grief. It is too much. Like you I feel the heaviness of the dump of constant awfulness.
I’m not talking about grief as society and culture are pitching it. The news and social media platforms are distorting our relationship with this core human experience. There is so much awfulness and obsessing about badness and darkness in our world. Re-thinking our media and entertainment intake is worthwhile. Another life coach recently shared how he no longer watches the news at all! It resonated for me and is worth considering.
Grief Is Real and Personal
My brothers, there are real and personal areas of grief we are invited into. Perhaps we have been told they are not a big deal; maybe life has moved too quickly to pause and process one of these events; or it could be we just need permission to call it for the hard, grief-connected thing it is. Let’s get closer to these in the following considerations.
Read the following list carefully and consider if one touches your life or someone you know.
Losing access to a child. Butterfly Kisses comes to mind and the launching of adult children. It could be a devastating falling out or the forever loss in the death of a child. These are some of the deepest and longest wounds a man can bear.
Realizing pain we’ve caused a child. Seeing our decision-making, presence, absence, discipline oversteps, personal wounds or unawareness cause injury of any kind to our children is pain filled. There may come a day when they return telling us of an event we have forgotten or remember differently. It is heavy to heart-wrenching to hear, “Dad, you hurt me.”
Leaving a job. Whether we enjoyed it or hated it, endings hurt. The circumstances of our departure always involves some discomfort and pain. The difficult decision-making, circumstances, interpersonal dynamics, and other factors. Our career and daily rhythms were moving in one direction then shifted. Even leaving hard and bad situations involve grief.
Tears in the eyes of a loved one. A loved one is one who by nature we love. Their physical and emotional well-being matter to us. Pain in the eyes of our spouse, a child, or dear friend are places of grief. Even harder is when we are the source of the loved one’s tears.
Aging parents and diminishment of mental and physical capabilities. The day is soon approaching when they will be gone, and their death certainly is cause for grief. Some are reckoning with a loss that happened years ago and reverberates in fresh ways today. Mother and father brought us into the world and no matter our present-day relationship we owe them our existence. Children love even the worst of parents and long for them. End of life years land heavy in the hearts of men who realize what is lost and possibilities that will never be fulfilled.
Physical injury, surgeries, and illness. These become more frequent as we age, and a reminder of what we steadily, and increasingly lose with time. Vitality, stamina, independence, immortality are high societal values and to lose them is connected to a sense of self-worth. It’s more than existential, it’s practical. Loss of income, availability, and capability to serve those we’ve committed to serve and care for.
Broken relationships.
Roads not traveled, and opportunities missed.
Decisions made in naivety and doors that forever shut.
Best made (intentioned) efforts that were still not enough.
Rejection. A ninth grade boy turned down in a hastily written note from his middle school crush. Singleness and aloneness lasting a life time. Divorce and departure of the one who promised to stay until death would they part. Work layoffs and dead-ending job hunts. A parent who abandoned you when young, a family member shut off to relationship.
Being passed over, unrecognized, not given deserved credit, ignored, or forgotten. If this dismissal lingered it can evolve into a lasting bitterness costing us even more than the initial hurt. Downcast-ness, complaining, a cancerous chip on the shoulder, distrust and emotional isolation compound this hurt.
Smashing a finger, stubbing a toe, slicing your finger but not quite needing stitches. Interruption, pain, need for simple first aid and the inconvenience of recovery whether it be an explicative-filled moment or few days of disruption.
A water leak or other small disaster that disrupts your plans for the rest of the day. Resources are already stretched thin and the inopportune timing feels like divine punishment and trial.
Cancelled plans for a getaway.
A lonely night when no one is available and seems to care.
Betrayal of someone trusted. Whether it be a friend, coworker, or one’s own partner, the guard is down as we are vulnerable and open. When harm comes and it usually takes time to recognize the full impact or harm. Recovery seems impossible.
Slander, slights and insults. Only heightened when the offending party refuses to repair or avoids responsibility.
Financial ruin. Even if the circumstances are minor the feeling is huge touching on our core identity. An investment gone bad, bankruptcy, job loss, divorce, emptied savings, or unforeseen medical bill can drop us into a pit feeling impoverished and desperate.
Each of these topics deserves a careful exploration in and of itself. All of these are the starting point. Latent in each is stuckness and transformation. Each is a mountain to climb, ascend, and carefully descend. The man who begins will be different than the man who finishes. I think it is so important to understand what and why we grieve before we move to action and resolution. So much harm has come into this world because of unprocessed and misdirected grief.
So-What, Now-What of Grief
Recently I performed the inspection of a home that felt particularly heavy to me. Walking through the house, the primary bedroom and bathroom, seeing a family photo on the wall of a middle-class, attractive family, all the material signs of a family that enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. The home was well-maintained and decorated with a coziness and evidence of a family that played. However, it was as though the home owners were not expecting to sell, much less my arrival that afternoon. It was as though they had begun their day, and just disappeared.
This is essentially what happened in the most tragic of ways. I learned from the neighbor, the father in the picture died of a drug overdose 18 months prior. The mother had died in the same way, presumably from grief, a year later. The twelve-year old boy was orphaned. As chaplain I’ve been on numerous drug deaths due to overdose and fentanyl. Never like this. I tried to piece together the story during and after the inspection. Misdirected and unprocessed grief reverberates into the lives of those loved and cared for most. I noticed the boy’s grade report on the fridge and his name. In the next few days after my visit, I knew grown-ups who did not live there would disassemble this home and pack the items throwing and giving away what has no meaning to them. Then, and even now as I write, I wonder if the boy has felt the loving arms of a man wrap around him ready to listen to his loss. He is young to have such a tall mountain to climb at so early an age. I pray he finds someone ready as time to process his profound loss.
The list is endless and yet we as men have difficulty coming up with what we should feel about grief. As mentioned in the outset, we’ve been inundated with the big, tragic and awful happening around the world. This dampens and oppresses the human spirit. Today these are unavoidable as algorithms ensure we get more and more of it. We miss the real grief-filled moments of our lives and those we care about. We show up so drained that we cannot offer the space and compassion needed. Our most common response is numbing, going away, busying up, or checking out – the psychological word for this is “dissociating”. We give to our children, spouses and dear friends the same most of us were given – very little or nothing.
At the core of our human longing is the desire to feel connected to another. We long to be seen and secure in a relationship. The engagement of grief is a powerful way to connection, love and emotional safety. Most of us are unaware of our grief, over-estimate our skillset in this area, and are wholly ineffective helping those around us. Often the lack of grief-related conversations with our partners, children or close friends is because they know we handle this area poorly. Sadly, we conclude things are good and there is little grief in life.
Concluding Invitation
There are four ideas I’m offering in this article.
We must understand the real, personal grief event that has left an imprint on our life.
Unprocessed and misdirected grief adversely effects our relationships in the here and now.
We are less aware and skilled at handling grief than we believe.
There is a deep, connecting experience available to us with those we love through grief engagement.
Moving forward from the resonate and pressing ideas above, reflect on the following. These can be considered as quiet inner thoughts, personal journaling or a honest conversation with a partner, friend or coach.
What is a loss you are experiencing?
What have you been avoiding?
What have you not yet shared about a recent grief-experience?
Who can you re-engage this grief process with?
Who is someone you may accompany and support on the pain-filled journey of loss?
Many exercises can aid in the practice and process of the grief emotion. Read the recent article for further guidance on this topic, “Grief for Dummies, Dense & Stoics: Walking Men Through the Dark Woods of Loss”
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