Identity Upheaval After Loss ~ Entry 3
By Marlisa McLaughlin
Overshadowed by Grief
Our self-perception can shift throughout any given day in response to our daily roles and circumstances, but life after loss abruptly shifts everything all at once–including our identity. We suddenly become a person of mourning, adding yet another layer of complexity to our already complex experiences of grief. As we continue to experience and navigate the vast emotional landscape of grief, our grieving identity may overshadow the person we felt we were before our loss. This can create feelings of fragmentation, isolation, or possibly a sense of separation from ourselves and others. How we cope with our loss will depend greatly upon how we see ourselves and how we are seen in the world at any given time.
Although our Western collective understanding of loss and how to adjust to it has greatly shifted over the last few decades, we still don’t have an inclusive grief vocabulary.
The challenge of dealing with our new identity can become even greater without a supportive “grief vocabulary.” True, it can be enough to simply state, “I’m sorry for your loss,” or I offer my condolences,” but there may be a desire–or perhaps even a need–for both parties to hear and feel something more personal.
Although our Western collective understanding of loss and how to adjust to it has greatly shifted over the last few decades, we still don’t have an inclusive grief vocabulary. Proper nouns for relatives of the deceased much beyond “widow” and “widower” are absent. When I became a motherless daughter at the age of six, the only definitive nouns I heard for family members in bereavement were “widow” and “widower”. Was I a widow child?
In retrospect, I somehow felt that my loss was secondary to my father’s loss and I didn’t really know where I fit in anymore. Fitting into a life that may not seem to even resemble the life we had prior to our loss can be as agonizing as the grief itself. Socially awkward condolences are probably more common than not. If a person in bereavement doesn’t really have a sound sense of how they are feeling or how they identify, it’s probable that it’s even more of a challenge for others to know.
For some time, identifying and being identified as a person of loss can support and validate our grieving experiences. Many in mourning initially feel lost or overwhelmed by their grief. They may not identify with anything other than their grief. So having a specific identity which reflects this emotional state and validates this emotional experience can really help.
But there may come a time when it’s no longer supportive–especially if the more debilitating aspects of grief have waned or shifted. I recall a client who had managed to come to terms with their loss enough to reenter daily life, but every time they ran into someone, they were greeted as a grieving person. This not only stirred up a great deal of challenging emotion, it made them feel bound to being a certain way in public that was no longer supportive to their present state of being.
Our social cues strongly determine how we interact with one another. As discussed in my Grief in Motion Series, subtle energy flow affects our levels of resilience and vitality. Subtle energy is subtle. Even though it may not be consciously acknowledged, a physiological shift in our energy flow can be sensed or felt by both ourselves and by others.
We use the word ‘vibes” to explain how we sense and/or experience another’s presence. “All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating.” When our energy is flowing adequately, our physical bodies radiate vibrancy. We literally create frequencies and vibrations that are stronger, more stable and coherent than when we feel less vibrant.
The opposite is true when our energy is not flowing adequately. So even though we may appear well (or “better than expected for a person in mourning”) others may walk away with a sense that something is not quite as it seems.
Our energetic appearance, our vibrational field, will play a vital role in how we are received by others and therefore the way in which we are identified. So how do we know when our subtle energy is flowing with vitality? We can use the breath to help us connect and identify that flow. Our breath reveals to us how constricted or not–how stressed or not–our system is. Stress causes us to physically tighten, which consequently constricts blood and air flow. Our ability to breathe deeply decreases.
Also, being able to control our breath may provide a sense of control during a time when we may not feel as though we have control over anything. That feeling of “I simply can’t take this anymore” may not feel so overwhelming when we keep our energy flowing.
Here’s a simple way to check in and make adjustments when needed:
Breath Check-in Exercise
Sit upright with feet flat on the floor
Relax the face, neck and shoulders
Try not to change your breathing rhythm– notice how you are breathing.
Ask yourself if: Your breath is smooth and long? Short and staggered? Somewhere in between?
Place your hands on your heart or your belly and draw a smooth, threadlike breath in through your nose and down to the belly. Hold for a moment.
Feel all that breath inside your body, then exhale strongly like you’re blowing out a birthday candle. Let the next inhale/exhale happen on its own. Repeat 3X.
Take the time you need to observe your breath as it enters and exits your body.
If you still feel tense, try taking longer inhales with slightly longer exhales.
Our breath reflects our vital energy flow. When we have a consistent flow of breath, we are more likely to feel more capable. Creating and then maintaining a stable breathing rhythm can help to stabilize a surge of grief.
Feeling more stable can help us to better connect to ourselves without the overwhelm of emotion which prevents us from being able to identify and relate to those other aspects of our identity that best serve us. Our self-identity may rest in the hands of our self-expectations, and when we feel as though we can, we do.