Morning is Unique
Mourning is an individual experience. For each person, grief takes different forms. A lot of people tout the virtues of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief. When my baby smothered herself in a pillow six years ago, the support groups I joined each handed me a copy of the five stages as if it were a guide book to the experience of mourning. Yet my experience and those of others around me seem to defy one single process, one single experience. The five stages did not help me in my personal search for healing. They did nothing for me except set me up for a confusing and incomplete definition of healing.
False Expectations:
Before my baby passed away, I lived in the illusion of safety, that just because no great tragedy had happened to me, it couldn’t. It felt like a kind of protection that shielded me from the worst the world had to offer. Then when my baby died, I was unprepared. I had taken a class on trauma writing. I had also written my master’s thesis on how reading fictional accounts of trauma and healing can provide a safer, somewhat removed space in which to deal with tragedy. But none of this prepared me for the actual experience of loss.
I had heard time heals all wounds and was set up by that “guide book” I was handed for an expectation that all I had to do was let time pass, and Kubler-Ross’s five stages would happen to me. As soon as they were done, I’d be healed. I’d go back to how I was before my tragedy had punched a big bloody hole in my heart. I wanted something to make it better because it hurt so much.
The Reality
I knew, based on my experiences with child development classes, that stages meant states of being that would happen on their own in a normalized sort of order. But in reality, I found myself going through a crazy mix of emotions, only a few of which matched up with Kubler-Ross’s stages of shock and denial, anger, depression and detachment, dialogue and bargaining, and acceptance, all of which were supposed to lead to a return to a meaningful life. I didn’t see a lot of anger or detachment. I couldn’t really deny anything. And there were so many more emotions that weren’t on the list that I faced. I discovered I could go through all of these emotions and more in a month, a week, or even an hour. I’d skip from shock to acceptance and back to depression or hysteria then eagerness to share my story and back to depression again. There was nothing stage-like in any of it. Even on days of acceptance, and even after returning to a meaningful life, it still hurt. My heart still felt like it had a bloody, nasty, painful hole in it that wouldn’t go away.
As time passed, I found ways to not think, to keep busy, to look at anything but my baby’s pictures or other triggers that sent me into fits of hysteria. Basically, time allowed me to grow scabs over the big, bloody, painful hole, so I wouldn’t have to feel it. But a scab is not nearly as comfortable or sensitive a tissue as regular flesh. All it took was a nudge or poke at the edges of the scab, and I was in pain again.
Research
So I started to look elsewhere for guidance in the healing process. I picked up Robert Neimeyer’s book, Meaning Reconstruction and the Exerience of Loss, that debunked Kubler-Ross’s stages as unscientific. He pointed out that Kubler-Ross’s original theory was based on the experience of dying, not on grief at all. And he also pointed out that her theory had no scientific foundation or basis in fact, that the “stages” she defined were not stages at all. I merely learned what I already knew, that grief involves “highly individual processes.” What I didn’t find in either text was a useful idea of what healing would feel like for me, what it even meant. Both texts defined healing as, basically, a return to normalcy. I had returned to some kind of functionality, which meant by either definition, I was healed. But I certainly didn’t feel healed. Memories of my loss still hurt acutely even years later.
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so another kind of guide I was given and studied was a variety of books by other LDS people about their experience of loss and healing. Almost across the board, they set up a model of prayer, reading scriptures, and above all, having another baby, a rainbow baby to fill the arms even if he or she couldn’t replace the baby lost. So we tried. We spent years trying, only to have a total of 15 losses in a row before we walked away from trying, one baby death and 14 first term miscarriages. All the testing brought us no answer as to the source of our problem and no rainbow baby. We’ve recently come to terms with the idea that my body just will not carry babies to term anymore for whatever reason.
Turning to the Source
So instead, I have turned to God for answers, and I have come to a greater understanding of the healing process than I ever did through science or pseudoscience. Just after my baby died, I turned intensely to faith. I prayed harder, studied scriptures more closely and with the guide of the Spirit, more than I ever have in my life. I felt the best, the most at peace, when I sensed other people’s prayers and when I was full of the influence of the Comforter, also called the Holy Ghost. God doesn’t want us to suffer. If we turn to Him, he will bring us comfort. I felt the best when I felt wrapped in His arms.
Being healed for me is not just about being functional. Someone could be dying inside but still live what looks like a normal life from the outside. The best definition I have heard is that a person who is healed is able to look at a picture or other reminder of the loved one and smile over the memories and blessings more than ache over the loss. Six years after my loss, I am not there yet, but I’d like to be. I have moments of peace like that, but they don’t last. However, this portrait of a healed heart gives me a goal to work toward above and beyond just the goal of functionality. I met someone recently who has bouts of depression but otherwise, arrived at the emotional state I’m still striving for within hours of delivery of a stillbirth. The Lord sent her spiritual experiences that immediately brought the peace and joy that have been hard-fought for me. Everyone is different, so everyone’s experience is different. True healing is a gift the Lord can give in His time and in His way if we earnestly seek it and pray for it.
The key is applying the Lord’s atonement. When Jesus suffered and died for us, he didn’t just suffer for our sins. He also suffered our pains. He understands what we suffer. He understands loss, sadness, and pain. We need to reach out to him. We need to seek His peace through obedience, through scripture study, and through bringing the Spirit into our lives so strongly that there is no more space for pain. He will buffer us from agony. He will bring us joy and peace.
One of the general authorities of the LDS church, Elder Shayne Bowen, told the story of how his toddler choked on chalk and died. Elder Bowen went through pain, anger, frustration, and guilt. He rejected the comforting words of those who tried to reach out to him. But as he focused more on gratitude for what he had rather than on his pain and loss, he began to find peace and joy. The Lord “gave him a new heart," a heart full of light rather than “darkness and despair.” He did warn that “you will never completely get over [grief] until you are once again with your departed loved ones […or] have a fullness of joy until [you] are reunited in the morning of the First Resurrection.” But we can still have joy, love, and peace. We can, as he says, “continue with good cheer.” The Lord can heal our hearts when we seek Him in sincere prayer, service of our fellow man, obedience, love, and gratitude.
We will never be the same person we were before. But we also don’t have to suffer for the rest of our lives, either. Each person has a different journey, but we don’t have to make this journey alone. We have our fellow travelers here, but most of all, we have the Lord who loves us with all his heart and wants us to find peace and joy.
