I often write about the early days of grief – that devastation zone where nothing makes sense, and words of intended “comfort” just grate. Support, true support, can be extremely hard to find. Otherwise intelligent, kind, compassionate people just don’t know what to do in the face of your grief.
It’s not entirely their fault. We don’t talk about the reality of grief in our culture. In fact, our culture seems to wear a massive set of reality-blinders when it comes to grief.
How can any of us learn how to support each other if we can’t talk openly about what grief is?
We’ve got this idea that there are only two options in grief: you’re either going to be stuck in your pain, doomed to spend the rest of your life rocking in a corner in your basement wearing sack cloth, or you’re going to triumph over grief, be transformed and come back even better than you were before.
Two options. On-off. Broken or healed.
It doesn’t seem to matter that nothing else in life is like that. Somehow, when it comes to grief, the entire breadth of human experience goes out the window.
There’s this whole middle ground between those two extremes (as there is for everything else in life), but we don’t know how to talk about it. We don’t know how to talk about grief if we step outside that pervasive cultural model of entirely healed or irrevocably broken.
We don’t know how to talk about living inside grief. Living alongside grief.
When I’m creating something for you, whether it’s a blog post, a public talk, or a new course, I think about that narrow band of options. I just can’t work inside that space – it’s not real. I don’t operate in the transformation model. I can’t give a happy ending to things. I can’t tie things up in a pretty bow and say, “Everything’s going to be okay, and you’re going to be even better than before,” because I don’t believe that and it’s not true.
At the same time, I can’t leave you with no message to live into. I can’t just say, sorry, this is going to suck forever and ever, and you’ll never feel any different. I can’t leave you, or anyone, down in that basement rocking in the corner. That’s not appropriate either.
Finding that middle ground is the real work of grief – my work, and yours. Each of us, each one of us, has to find our way into that middle ground. A place the doesn’t ask us to deny our grief, and doesn’t doom us forever. A place that honors the full breadth of grief, which is really the full breadth of love.
What would that middle ground look like for you?
It’s a big question. Your answers will shift and change over time, from the early days of grief through life outside the initial devastation zone. Wherever you are in your grief, I’d like to extend the invitation to join me in exploring the middle ground. I’ve opened a few more spots on my calendar so we can walk through that process together.
When we stake out ground in the middle, there’s room for all the experiences of being alive: the good, the horrifying, the beautiful, and the broken. Nothing is left out. Nothing is inherently wrong. What a relief to have more than two options.
As always, I love to hear from you. Leave a comment and tell me about your middle ground.
I think my middle ground is believing in and honoring the transformation that has taken place in response to my losses and in still honoring those I lost as part of that journey. When I’m only talking about the transformation and not about how difficult that early phase was I’m not sharing the whole story. Thank you.
Just found your site today…this is the second article I’ve read and again, I’m so grateful! The grief I feel after losing my brother is precious to me — because it is a part of him that I carry with me every day and I don’t ever want to lose it. So there is no “getting over it” ever — because to let go of the grief is to let go of him. But I know I can’t let it stop me either — and I know in my heart that’s not what he would want for me. My middle ground is understanding the gift my brother left me in his untimely and undeserved departure: a sense of urgency for my own life. That is my work.
Grace,
I wanted to respond because I feel like your comment could as easily have been mine. I just came across this website through a blog post of another person. It is so refreshing and intriguing at the same time to hear that not every painful experience in our lives happen for a reason and that we don’t have to “let our grief go” or suffer the immeasurable pain for the rest of our lives. Because this is the first time I have ever had anyone (and it happen to be people I don’t even know!) tell me these things, I couldn’t for the life of me express what my middle ground is yet. Not sure it has existed because I have always felt I was required to either live in utter despair or triumphant transformation. My brother also had a very undeserving, untimely death. I will never “get over it” and I feel comfort knowing I don’t have to anymore.
Yes, ladies, yes. Sibling grief will be with us for the rest of our lives. We expect to grow up and grow older with our siblings. We expect them to be with us through all of life’s major events.
My brother’s death also felt too early to all the rest of us on Earth. His wife was pregnant with their second son. Their older son was 4.
Now, we live without him. My sister and I (and our families) go through life’s changes without him. Our parents grieve him. His wife and and sons grieve him. He will not be with us as we grow and change.
My brother died 4.5 years ago. With much work, time, and energy, I have come to a place of “middle ground.” I have come to a place/time in which I can grow and change, to improve myself. But I am not “over it” and never will be. And that’s okay.
I feel like I am turned off completely numb I lost my mom in May 2020 and I was just starting to heal abit. Could look at her pictures without crying and then I just lost my dad on April 19 of this year and my world shattered again was not expecting the passing of my dad Many people think because they were older that everything should be okay but it’s not I have a hard time doing day to day things and feel like I am sinking
I’m so sorry for your heartbreak.
Me too. Thanks for sharing about the loss of your parents. Even though my dad was 90 and ready to go, I am devastated to lose my last beloved parent.
Yes. Sibling grief. All Grief is important and worthy of Valadation. This is the first time I have read something about Sibling death. My brother died in December 2021. I thought we would grow old together. I will never be the same.
My grief for my brother is precious to me too. I don’t know if Ive found my middle ground yet… I think I inch closer and then falter for a while only to regain my footing and feel a sense of calm…maybe this is as good as it gets…. I am satisfied that this may be how it is for me. I want to honour my brother and do what he’d have wanted but to actually live through this is a whole other thing. Nothing prepares you for the absolute life shifting event of an untimely death….
Cathy xx
Thank you for your beautiful words, Grace. I too lost my brother (18 months ago) and we were incredibly close all of our lives (he was 59 when he died, I was 55). I miss him terribly. I miss our connection. I miss having the only one in a family of 8 children with whom I really connected. Like you, I have been spurred on to do my own life’s work and last year I wrote a book, in a month. I’m still to edit and publish it but will do some day. I won’t ever get over losing him either, but I know that in time I will learn how to live with the loss, as I did when my mother passed (when I was 12) and my father many years later. Right now I’m grieving deeply, but this too shall pass. Thank you.
Grief, of course, intertwines with other emotions, especially when losses aren’t random, or nature-caused, but have been inflicted on us by other people. Having come here by a link, acknowledging all this to myself is the first step of that middle space. Then, accepting the complexities of life around these losses is second.
The tough part is dealing with largely conservative Christian relatives, on the one hand, who don’t want to admit realities of family history, as well as insisting on “healed,” and a public on the other hand that might know the surface me, and wonder why I’m not even better off, in various ways.
Just stumbled across your blog today as it was linked from another. I immediately added you to my feed and signed up for your newsletter. I look forward to more reading.
30 years grieving for the forced surrender of my first born child to a closed adoption (good middle class Catholic girls do not get pregnant out of wedlock and if they do they way they are welcomed back into the family is to abandon their child to strangers. Stupid whore.). I have come to a middle ground that my grief is not something I am going to heal from. It is something I carry along side me. I decide how much power it holds over my life. These days it just makes me deeply sad.
It’s been 12 years since my daughter died after being diagnosed with cancer 9 months previously. I’m still looking for that middle ground. Sometimes I feel like I can do this. Other times I feel like I’ve been given a life sentence. Living without her seems impossible, still. I don’t know how I’ve done it for this long. I don’t know how to keep doing it, but somehow I do. It’s some ups and a lot of downs, but I truly don’t think I have found that middle ground.
Same here, Jan :'( I’m still struggling like you 9 years and 3 months since my daughter was killed (as a pedestrian crossing the road) in a road traffic collision… Your words could have been mine, were certainly my thoughts, and so resonated with me. Just wanted to reach out and connect, one grieving mum to another, and say thank you ♥
Thank you, Jan & Sue. Tonight I really needed to read your posts My son died 15 months ago after a motorcycle accident and I’m finding ‘normal’ life a battle at times. In my heart I know that it’s okay for me to feel like this but it helps me to hear it from other grievers.
My beautiful daughter was killed in an Atv accident close to 8 months ago. The middle ground is but just a fantasy and I’m learning, every single day, how to carry all my suffering
I have so many people I grieve for, but the fresh grief is my husband Chris who was killed by a drunk driver June 7, 2014, we will come back to that date later, I’m not in a middle place yet, mainly because of all the legal issues around a drunk driving crash, it takes months to prosecute, if not years to sentence someone for murder, and then the deals with the Devils happen to save the state money and time so the killer gets a plea deal, which my husband Chris didn’t get any deals! Then to deal with the legalities of losing a spouse to everyone wants a piece of what we own, which now most going to our adult son’s because after 30 years our union wasn’t on paper so now I’m not married, I don’t have claim to my life, so do I have claim to my grief? I’m no where near the middle! I’m sinking to the bottom of the abyss, I would enjoy the basement in a corner rocking. This type of grieving isn’t the same as others. In my lifetime I’ve been in situations where people die,
My friends in high school committed suicide, my best friend was murdered, my dad died when I was 18 to lung cancer, my sister died at 30yes old to breast cancer (June 7, 1997, yes same date as my husband Chris dying), my brother in law committed suicide, grandparents (but that’s natural, so it’s easier to accept), I’ve had a cousin murdered, and another one killed in the line of duty in law enforcement.
I know grief, I know death!
I was faced with my own mortality twice with having had cancer.
When you experience the loss of a spouse after 30 years, it’s different, the bed is empty, the calls go unanswered, no more texts every hour, no more Facebook updates, I’m afraid to change my status to Widow because it will make it final for me somehow, and that’s scary, his things are where he left them and there’s nothing I can do to convince myself it’s time for them to go! When my sister died I went through her stuff and took what I could fit in my suitcase with no concern for her husband and just didn’t think he would want or have any use for her stuff anyway, I feel bad now for doing that! When someone dies people say things and make promises, I say things too, but I didn’t know they were just words to say, it’s similar to choosing sides after a divorce, people disappear, friends you’ve had with your spouse are gone, the daily conversations you overheard everyday are gone, the stories of who did what and with who are gone, it’s just quiet, the smells in the house are gone, the sounds of footsteps coming into the house after a long day of work and the slam of the door are gone! My husband is gone because some stupid girl drank too much and drove her car. It’s not right or fair!
(Legally she tested at BAC.31, 3X’S LEGAL LIMIT, driving 106mph in a 40mph residential roadway rearended chris and he lost control hitting a tree and killed at the scene) that image is unconceivable! I wonder if he thought of me knowing he was going to die heading towards the tree?
I have no answer for this but feel writing may at least open the gate to a middle ground idea. I live between the opposites, feeling such deep sorrow that I don’t want to go on living without my partner, and then another part of me emerges that wants to live, wants to write, wants to be happy and love life again. It’s agony, because I feel that grief is stealing away my joy, my hope, the essence of who I am. The middle seems to be holding on when things get so grim, and not taking action to destroy myself. It’s like having endless root canal. Opening your mouth to the dentist, trying to stay upbeat, wait for the process to end, knowing you are doing it for a good purpose, to save your teeth, prevent more decay. Yet, you get tired and you know your mouth will never be the same again. You do your best. I have found moments of grace, when I let the sorrow be there and something gentle inside me says ‘ it’s OK, you don’t have to put yourself back together again and you can just be broken’. I feel a kindness emerge within. It is something I seek from people, which is hit or miss, but to have that kindness within, though fleeting for me at this time, is golden.
I wish I could break down in public when a wave of grief washes over me. I then wish, somebody would walk up to me and say: It’s okay to cry. I know loss, too. Let’s grief together. There are so many of us, with bottled up grief and brave faces, running home so we can cry behind closed doors. What strikes me is the amount of mental health issues that are so prevalent now, and you only hear about an acquaintance’s wife who tried to kill herself, or the spouse of a friend who is on anxiety medication since years but now he lost the plot — you hear about it, when its too late. The stigma around grief and mental health issues is what prevents us from finding our middle ground. An insane culture that denies vulnerability, a culture that seeks refuge in materialism and not connection. And we cannot connect, because people don’t link death and loss and illness and climate change etc. to their very selves, unless its too late. And then those who have come to know grief have fallen to the periphery and we can’t voice our pain and love because death and loss is opaque to those, who haven’t visited those places yet. And it is irrelevant to a cultural machinery that runs on the illusion of permanence. But we are part of this culture too. Us, linked with each other, joined, not only in grief, but in love that we have come to know so deeply, this is the middle ground. Only together, with the gentleness of sincere listening, and the openness of heart-felt loss, can we find a middle ground. This death and grief literate culture needs us! Desperately!
I don’t remember how I found this site, but I am so thankful that I did find it. This is the 1st site that I’ve found which treats my grief and utter sadness in a realistic manner.
I am FAR from middle ground right now. It’s been only 7 months. I am making it through every day. Some parts of each day are ok. But, I see us in everything that I do. I did move, but one often forgets that we take ourselves with us wherever we go. I had performed CPR on my partner until the services arrived, knowing instantly that he was gone. I just could not stand being in that same place ever again. I spent 3 nights there after his death. All of the rest of the time until I bought a new house was spent with friends.
I wish us all luck with our journeys. One foot in front of the other. One moment at a time!
The phrase “irrevocably broken” reminds me of the Nozomi Project, which is a charity in Tohoku, Japan that is making the dishes and pottery that were broken during the earthquake and tsunami into jewelry. Their motto is “Beauty from Brokenness.” My wife and I found the story inspirational, so we bought pendants for ourselves and as holiday gifts.
In less than an hour, I am leaving to go to her inurnment service. I am, without a doubt, irrevocably broken. And I think, that middle ground I will need to strive for is to not deny that there are missing pieces, but to try to find the beauty in my brokenness.
I lost my first love to cancer when I was 24 years old. It was a painful, ugly death.
I won’t lie. The idea that we as a society like to soothe ourselves with is that illness can bring revelations for the sick, and that their impending mortality is eased into peacefully.
Maybe. If you are lucky.
I watched a young man rage against his illness, in turns facing it head on, then denying its existence and burying his fear in drugs.
He was not ready, at any point, to die. On his death bed, he literally fought with me to take him home. He had lost half his body weight, yet I struggled to keep him in his bed. He died, frightened, and not ready to leave.
Six months later, people were surprised that I would burst into tears for no good reason. “It’s time to move on”. (Please go to hell was my unspoken reply).
It is now 20 years later. I am safe, happy and loved. But “closure”? I don’t know what that is.
The death of someone you love is not experience you can excise from your life. It becomes part of you. It’s not a negative or a positive. It just is .
I can still remember his final days. I can smell them and hear them. It’s no longer a torment. Just a memory. I don’t know if that is healthy. I can still remember the smells, sights, and smells of happy events, so maybe it’s fine.
I often feel guilty. While my life is far from a disaster, I had hoped that his death and the resultant, clinging grief, would be a ashes/phoenix situation. That I would move forward from this horror and grow and make all the right choices and reach my full potential, in a way that he couldn’t because of a shitty illness.
But that didn’t happen. I just kept on living, doing best, doing my worst,making mistakes and generally just being human.
I don’t have a middle ground yet. I’m looking for it. My husband has been gone 9 months… It’s horrible to miss him so much. But we have 3 kids so I have to LIVE, I just don’t know how anymore, but I’ll figure it out bc I have to. I wish some wise person could just tell me exactly what to do, I’d listen, I’d do it.. I was strong with him. We were strong and safe together, always. I don’t feel strong or safe without him bc I’m not really. But I have to be. I had so much confidence at his side. Now I’m having a hard time figuring out what my ‘new’ place is, what the heck I’m supposed to be doing. I was blessed to be a SAHM. I was Good at it! Lol. I took care of our house, our kids, pets, errands, meals, his health when he was diagnosed w/ a rare aggressive cancer.. all the things. Suddenly that’s not good enough anymore. I need to Provide for these hungry mouths and I’m ill equipped. I have a worthless degree (philosophy🙄) that I’ve never ‘used’, no recent work history.. How the heck did I end up here??
I don’t have a middle ground yet. I’m looking for it. My husband has been gone 9 months… It’s horrible to miss him so much. But we have 3 kids so I have to LIVE, I just don’t know how anymore, but I’ll figure it out bc I have to. I wish some wise person could just tell me exactly what to do, I’d listen, I’d do it.. I was strong with him. We were strong and safe together, always. I don’t feel strong or safe without him bc I’m not really. But I have to be. I had so much confidence at his side. Now I’m having a hard time figuring out what my ‘new’ place is, what the heck I’m supposed to be doing. I was blessed to be a SAHM. I was Good at it! Lol. I took care of our house, our kids, pets, errands, meals, his health when he was diagnosed w/ a rare aggressive cancer.. all the things. Suddenly that’s not good enough anymore. I need to Provide for these hungry mouths and I’m ill equipped. I have a worthless degree (philosophy🙄) that I’ve never ‘used’, no recent work history.. How the heck did I end up here?? ….
My youngest son died almost a year ago at age 16 after a bike crash. I relate to the people here saying they don’t want to let go the grief, the pain, the missing out. It is indeed a life long thing, taking him with me along the years. But humor also keeps me going, since his friends pass by reguraly and we can tell all those stories and share them. I think we are all moving all the time between the perspective off loss and the perspective of living again.
It’s like a rollercoaster – either I am up or down. No middle ground, just always searching. My husband had a stroke suddenly in Jan, 2021 and then he was gone. Now I struggle to find me and my place, we were so happy and really had “us” down pat. I felt so incredibly loved and protected with him. Now it’s just me. People are awkward around me and I am awkward around people. Somedays I do have a “good” day but then it is so bad the next day, that now I expect when I am feeling strong that the next day well be a great big black hole. After having the greatest love of my life and my perfect soulmate, I can’t imagine that happiness feeling ever again. Middle ground – yes, I am sure it well evolve. The feeling of being so incredibly loved – no, never again.
For me, the middle ground is getting to the place of acceptance. The place of being able to smile on more days, rather than feeling low on most. The place of remembering the good times, rather than feeling the pain of the loss. The place of being able to perform normal life activities with ease, rather than feeling like folding the washing is hard work. After what feels like a lifetime of loss, I know that place will come, but when my work to heal is done. It will come when my tears are shed and my anger is spent. I know it is there, I have found that middle ground before. For now, I must trust the process I know so well. I must keep going. I must cry when I need to cry. I must be angry when I need to be angry. And, I need to express all of those things in safe and healthy ways. Then I will heal.
My life revolved around his. He took so much of me away with him when he died. I do not even recognize myself, or who I once was. I feel wiped out and irrelevant. I try to do something productive with my days but I don’t always succeed. It’s been over 2 years since he died but it still feels like it all happened yesterday. I am afraid I really am stuck. As a former funeral director (he was also) I know that I am experiencing or exhibiting complicated grief. I know I should probably “see someone about it” but…I guess I really don’t care. I am not suicidal or on a dangerous path of self-destruction. I am just…stuck.
I’m in the in-between. Two weeks in.
No, he’s not dead and maybe I don’t belong on this forum, but my husband’s acute subdural hematoma on Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. is sure to change things irrevocably.
And I grieve for our loss of our simple, sweet normal life.
Walking in to the rehabilitation hospital last night, seeing him sunken, sleeping on the bed, waking to me with a vacant, sweet smile and a kind word, I grieve the Michael I knew.
No, he’s not dead. But I’m grieving for what’s gone. And I’m angry with the platitudes, the empty, useless, vacuous offers of, “…if there’s anything I can do?”
Yes: give me my husband back, whole.
I lost my mother suddenly to Congestive Heart Failure August 2021. She was 63 and I am 42. I have no middle. Right now I am trying to just wrap my mind around the fact here one day and gone the next. I am getting out of bed everyday because I have kids that need me and a husband. I gotta make money and help keep the bills paid. I am just going through the motions. My dreams toture me. Being awake tortures me. Just to close my eyes I just see her and having to kiss a dead body in a hospital bed goodbye. She wanted to be creamated.
Only her siblings and a cousin came to her celebration of life due to weather and COVID. I feel she deserved better. I do not know I will ever find that middle. But I am glad that for right now I know I dont ha e to be one or the other or both or none. I can be all of the above if I need to be and I think I kinda am right now.
I found this website through Facebook tonight.
I am working on finding my middle ground but I am not there. I’m still in the I can’t believe this is real phase and I am non sure what to do now phase.
I lost my husband on Nov. 3rd 2021. When we went to bed on Nov 2nd he was having a lot of back pain. I woke up to him being unresponsive. I have family members trying to “fix” me. They want me to move on sooner then I am ready. At first I wasn’t angry with “if there is anything I can do…” or ” what do you need” because I didn’t know what I needed at the time. At first I would say ” yes, bring my husband back to me.” Now I find my self getting angry with those questions. I’m hopeful that one day I can find my middle ground because right now the tunnel is very dark and scary.