Most of us experience profound loss at some point in our lives, yet we live in a culture that is often “grief illiterate,” according to grief expert Lisa Keefauver, who has penned a book cheekily titled Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * Most of us experience profound loss at some point in our lives, yet we live in a culture that is often “grief illiterate,” according to grief expert Lisa Keefauver, who has penned a book cheekily titled Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Most of us experience profound loss at some point in our lives, yet we live in a culture that is often “grief illiterate,” according to grief expert Lisa Keefauver, who has penned a book cheekily titled Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss.
“Grieving is not something that can be completely done and certainly not in a hurry,” Keefauver writes in her 272-page guidebook on how to live with loss, reestablish your identity in grief and redefine a relationship with a lost loved one. “It’s not something we can complete by checking off a to-do list.” Rather, Keefauver offers an alternative to the myth of closure for anyone experiencing loss.
Instead of trying to move on from grief, she explores ways of moving forward with it. Supplied photo Lisa Keefauver..
. TK As a social worker and grief activist with lived experience, Keefauver dispels many myths, such as the often-repeated yet entirely untrue phrase that time heals all wounds. “Time is a necessary but insufficient ingredient to healing.
Simply letting time pass isn’t enough. During that time, we need to attend to our cognitive, emotional, physical, spiritual and relational well-being,” she writes. Through experiencing her own grief after the unexpected loss of her husband in 2011 and in her work as a therapist, Keefauver has identified many other mistruths that contribute to unnecessary suffering and feeling stuck in grief.
By exploring 35 specific topics, she offers contrary ways of viewing the often-misunderstood process, while providing a how-to method for healing. Each topic provides well-researched information along with an invitation to examine new ways of understanding emotions associated with loss, such as sadness and guilt. “It’s more helpful to look at the presence of our emotions as information rather than having an inherent good/bad value,” she writes.
“Trust that they will move through you, as every single emotion you’ve ever experienced has done.” There are meditations and practices to discover new ways of tackling sticky emotion and even a section for those experiencing complex grief where trauma is intertwined with loss, resulting in intense feelings of regret and anguish. In a section entitled “There is No Grief GPS,” Keefauver invites the reader to address the inexplicable pain within the many unanswered questions accompanying grief, such as “How will I raise my children without their father?” or “How will I carry on without my mother?” What follows are contemplative ways of “exploring what it would feel like to make peace with the question and with the fact that for now, you might not have an answer.
” Grief is a Sneaky Bitch Monday mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. Included in the appendix is a list of what not to say to someone who is grieving, such as “everything happens for a reason,” or any sentence that begins with “At least..
.” and how to react when unhelpful comments come your way. At its best, Keefauver’s book identifies one of the most heart-wrenching feelings many of us experience in the aftermath of loss, while shining a light to finding our way through.
“Navigating the world without their presence may cause you to feel as if you’re in a perpetual state of homesickness...
(but) as a result of new experiences, new connections, hard work, healing, resting, and feeling all the feels, we find ourselves somewhere that feels like home.” Undoubtedly, this guidebook is a valuable companion for anyone in a season of loss and walking that complex, confusing, disorientating and lonely path toward home. Rochelle Squires is an avid book reader who traded her government briefing binders for novels and can be found at home reading from her growing to-be-read pile.
Rochelle Squires is a recovering politician after serving 71⁄2 years in the Manitoba legislature. She is a political and social commentator whose column appears Tuesdays. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism.
If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss By Lisa Keefauver University of Texas Press, 272 pages, $27 Rochelle Squires is a recovering politician after serving 71⁄2 years in the Manitoba legislature. She is a political and social commentator whose column appears Tuesdays. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism.
If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
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