By Walter Loughran MSed 

When I was asked to write a blog about my experience with bereavement groups (and make it personal), my first reaction was,  “Can I do that?” I mean, a lifetime of training and experience said you don’t talk about this stuff outside of group especially in a blog. Well here goes…

For me personally, group is a form of sacred space, a place where it is safe to explore possibilities.

About ten years ago I was handed a box with all sorts of stuff in it, poems, short essays, psychological assessment tools, feelings charts, even bits and pieces of research papers all having some connection to working through grief.

Looking at the box, I realized I was on my own and fell back on what experience and a few trusted mentors had shared. If I was quiet enough and listened to what the group presented, they would tell me what work needed to be done.

Ten years later, I have learned to bend my ear to hear each voice in the group and in doing so, my life has been transformed as well. The death of someone we love truly is the brick wall on life’s pathand we hit it hard and fast.

Recovering from the trauma takes time and not a little effort. We have designed the eight week “Grief’s Journey” group as a way to navigate back into day to day life successfully.

As a child of the 60s I shared my dinner time with Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid. Civil Rights marches, sit-ins at Columbia University, the Vietnam War protests all were part of a well balanced meal. Senior year of high school was a countdown to the draft and the possibility of dying on the other side of the world. Death was no stranger and the search for meaning in a world that had lost all sense had begun.

Finding meaning in meaninglessness, hope where there is only hopelessness, rest where restlessness reigns and realizing that no matter how busy you get there is no way to fill the emptiness you feel deep within, these are the kinds feelings expressed in group. As a counselor there are a variety of clinical solutions available and referrals to be made when deemed necessary to these symptoms as expressed.

This is not, however, the way my group experience has evolved. The experience of grief, except in extreme instances, is not pathological. This is what I have learned.

A colleague suggested to me that to understand the darkness within another you must first explore the darkness within yourself. I agree…

So group has taught me that there is process available. You can move from meaninglessness to a sense of meaning, hope can be found… sometimes in the least likely places and this emptiness that accompanies  grief is not the emptiness of nothing but the vast unknown that was hidden buy our busyness and frantic activity of mind.

And rest…. yes, rest can be found through following our breath to that place of calm certainty where the mind no longer is a distraction but a dispassionate observer of the next inhalation and exhalation.

Still with me?

I’m rambling…but isn’t that what blogging is about? You know this is a bit like telling some one about you personal experience of chocolate cake or a Hendrix concert. It really can’t be done. You will never know what it was like to see Hendrix live. But I could cut you a piece of chocolate cake and no conversation would be necessary.

As a counselor or even as a regular guy, I cannot look into a grief- stricken soul and see what they are going through nor can I take their grief away from them. This is perhaps the hardest lesson I have learned.

No matter how much you are suffering your grief belongs to you. It is designed to change you in ways that are entirely particular to who you are as an individual.

My job is to honor and recognize your suffering and welcome you into the group, a place where you may learn to transform your suffering through acceptance and begin to reinvest all the energy spent in grief.

Into what you may ask will you reinvest this energy?

That, my friend, is for you to know and for me to find out.

Walter is an HPH Hospice Bereavement Counselor in Pasco County and has been with the agency since 2004. He has helped countless individuals over the years come to terms with their grief and learn not only to live again – but to thrive. Walter has accomplished this with a compassionate heart and by providing individual counseling to our adult hospice family members and facilitating ongoing and Grief’s Journey bereavement groups.