My Journey With Grief Through Meta-Coaching - The Reframes (Part 4 of 4)

‍ ‍

Dear Reader,

By the end of Part Three, coaching had helped me change the internal picture.

I was no longer only the child calling for her parents. I could stand as an adult beside them. I could have healthier internal conversations without pretending they were literal conversations with the dead. I could stop demanding that every WHY produce an answer before I gave myself permission to move on.

Now we can return to the seven experiences that had been compressed into the word grief.

1. Despair: From a Problem to Solve to a Reality to Live With

Death remained final. Coaching did not make that fact attractive, but it helped me stop treating the problems raised by the finality of death as a personal challenge issued by the universe to ‘problem-solver’ Annabelle.

Coaching helped me to make a distinction I had previously missed: there is a difference between being a problem-solver and problem-solving when it is appropriate.

This led me to acknowledging that accepting the finality of their death did not mean approving. It did not mean that I loved them less or that I was “over it.”

It meant recognizing that I was a fallible human, as were they and that using my problem-solving skills to solve an unsolvable problem is not a good way to lead a purposeful life.

2. Regret: Peace Without a Perfect Past

I could not turn back time and speak with my parents again. But I learnt to be at peace with it.

One way was to have those internal conversations where I could bring more resources to both sides. I could imagine what my parents might have understood with greater perspective. I could say what I now needed to say without pretending that those words had literally been spoken before they died.

I also began moving from being a WHY person to being a HOW person. The WHY questions kept looking backwards for an explanation that might finally make the past feel complete. The HOW questions turned me towards the life still in front of me: How can I live peacefully without every answer? How can I carry the lesson without continuing the punishment? How can I relate to my parents now?

I could allow unresolved events to remain unresolved.

3. Over-Responsibility: Returning Responsibility to Its Proper Owner

Coaching helped me distinguish between what had genuinely been my responsibility and what was not.

I had made decisions. I had acted with the information, emotional resources and circumstances available to me at the time. I could review those actions honestly without granting myself fictional powers over death.

I learnt that it was never my responsibility to force my capable adult-mother to the doctor, nor was it achievable even if I had tried. And the same went for my father.

I had committed no crimes and had no reason to punish myself by constantly feeling guilty.

4. Loneliness: Becoming the Adult in the Picture

When my internal representation changed, so did the meaning of being without my parents.

I was no longer a small child beneath two giants. I was an adult standing on equal footing with two other adults.

Their deaths still meant absence, but not helplessness or loneliness.

I could recognise the resources I had developed, the family I had created and the capacity I now possessed to guide myself. My parents had contributed to the adult I became. Their work was not erased because they were no longer physically present to supervise it.

My existence means they are still here in some way, and I carry with me everything they have taught me during their time on earth.

5. Longing: Carrying What Remains

Some information is genuinely gone.

An internal conversation cannot tell me a medical fact my parents never shared. Imagination is many things, but it is not a substitute for pathology records.

Accepting that loss was part of the reframe.

At the same time, not everything they knew disappeared. Their values, expressions, habits, stories and perspectives had already influenced me. I could ask myself what advice they might have offered—not as infallible information transmitted from elsewhere, but as a way of accessing what I had learned from knowing them.

I could also become more deliberate about recording and sharing family information for my son. And I accepted that while the direct information from them was lost, technology has evolved to a point where I can look to genetic tests for certain diseases and other such alternatives in their absence.

6. Frustration: From Witnessing My Son’s Life to Being Present Within It

My parents will not physically watch my son grow up. There is no reframe that makes that fact fair.

But their relationship with him does not have to be reduced to an empty space.

By overcoming my nightmares, I can tell him their stories. I can describe their personalities, their strengths and their imperfections. I can let him know where he comes from. I can notice the values, gestures or family patterns that continue through me and perhaps through him.

My parents cannot witness his life directly, but they can be represented within it.

Once I could speak about them without becoming overwhelmed, I was able to give my son something that my avoidance had been withholding: access to his grandparents through me.

7. Fear: Giving Myself Permission to Feel the Sadness

One of the most important changes was giving myself permission to feel all the sadness.

Previously, I had treated sadness as the first step towards being overwhelmed: sadness would lead to crying, crying would lead to losing control, and losing control would lead to nightmares. Coaching helped me discover that I could allow sadness to be fully present without making it permanent.

Feeling an emotion does not require surrendering my entire mind and body to it, nor does it make the emotion a permanent state that I cannot leave.

I could feel sadness and even choose when to feel it. I could cry without assuming I would fall apart. I could remember my parents without automatically returning to the moments of their deaths.

The aim was to give the emotion its proper place, understand what it was trying to do and choose how I wanted to respond.

Avoidance had once protected me from being overwhelmed. Coaching gave me other forms of protection: language, perspective, emotional regulation and an adult position from which to experience the memories.

I could finally reach the love without being swallowed by the pain surrounding it.

What Changed

Today, I no longer have the nightmares.

The last time I dreamt was about my father. I do not recall much of it, other than us talking and I was telling him in a very assertive voice that ‘this is the best I can do for you, and I hope this is enough’. When I woke up, I felt empowered and at peace.

I can speak about my parents and feel genuinely at peace. I can remember my mother as more than a woman slipping into a coma and my father as more than the conflict and illness of his final years.

I do not believe that coaching erased my grief. It helped me stop using one word for seven different experiences and then wondering why the word felt so enormous.

Once separated, each part could be understood:

•           despair was resisting finality;

•           regret was trying to complete unfinished conversations;

•           over-responsibility was protecting me from helplessness;

•           loneliness belonged partly to a childlike identity;

•           frustration was reaching for lost guidance and knowledge;

•           longing was trying to keep my parents included in my son’s life; and

•           avoidance was protecting me from emotions I did not yet know how to handle.

When the meanings changed, the task I had unconsciously given my mind changed too.

My mind no longer had to return night after night to search for the moment when my mother could still be awakened, my father could still return, the relationship could be repaired, or the ending could be rewritten.

There was nothing left for the nightmares to solve so they disappeared.

Dear Reader, if grief keeps returning to you in the same form, I would not suggest you try to suppress it. But I will invite you to become curious.

What have you placed inside the word grief? Take a moment to look beneath the label. If you would like help understanding what is there, please feel free to reach out by clicking on the Let’s Talk button at the top right.