Grief Anonymous: #1

How do you navigate grief when you have a difficult relationship with them?

Welcome to Grief Anonymous, a new weekly series!

Do you have a question, query or something you need to get off your chest and want to hear from others who just get it?

Grief Anonymous has got you.

Every Friday morning I will post an anonymous question box link on The Grief Gang’s Instagram stories for you to share what’s on your grieving mind and heart.

The following Monday I will choose one question to share on Instagram and Substack and we as the community will do our best to support. I’ll be sharing my two pence over here on Substack in full.

Welcome to our first Grief Anonymous submission…

“How do you navigate grief when you have a difficult relationship with them?

Maybe you are estranged from the person or they weren’t as present in your life as they should have been?”

I feel it’s important for me to say top end here that I don’t have a direct personal relationship with grief and estrangements and therefore want this person to know that what I share below is based on the knowledge I have come to learn through working alongside and with people who do.

It’s a layered and sometimes tricky experience grieving for someone you either had a difficult relationship with or were estranged from. It throws in questions or thoughts that you might feel really isolated in, confused or scared to share with others close to you in fear of ‘speaking ill’ of the dead.

When people die, they can be evangelised. Someone dies and we reminisce and hold how amazing, caring, attentive loving and any other nicety we might apply to them and their character. But what if the person who died, actually wasn’t any of the above or only fleetingly? There might have been parts of them that we can lovingly remember, but if for the most part we’re haunted by all the difficult and harsh parts of them and your relationship, how does that play into how we grieve for them?

For this person and others who relate, you might already acknowledge that you were grieving for this person and your relationship long before they died. If you hadn’t perhaps thought about that, take a moment to sit with that and if that might relate. Your grieving process most likely started a long time ago. And it’s absolutely valid to claim that. Grief is not explicitly tied to death.

You’re grieving for how they didn’t show up in your life.

You’re grieving for the life you thought you’d have together.

You’re grieving for the should haves.

You’re grieving for the version of you that you never got the opportunity to fully meet.

You’re grieving for the grieving experience that others get to have and you don’t.

For those who relate to this submission, I’m going to presume you may or may not have had some thoughts along the lines of “Do I have a right to grieve for them?” or even “Do others around me question/diminish/forget my grief because we had a difficult relationship/were estranged?”

I’m here to tell you, you have every single right to grieve. Your difficulty in the relationship or estrangement does not take away your right, depth and value to grieve for your person. People I have met in the GG community have shared this is often a difficult aspect, claiming the right and validation to their grief. Fear that if they don’t share or feel anything but love, longing and adoration for their person, they’re not ‘doing grief right’ or a bad person.

When I’ve spoken with people in my groups and 1:1 mentoring, honouring and remembering is often a topic that comes up a lot. In the context of remembering someone you were estranged or had difficulties with, it might feel a bit grey. There can be a pressure, whether internal or external to only remember and cling onto whatever ‘good’ bits we can hold onto. However, I think to truly arrive at a place of honouring and remembering your person, is to honour and remember the difficult parts too. Them as a whole. The more we try to push those parts of them down, the more violently they will fight their way to be heard. Give them the room. It is painful, but it might be even more painful to continue to honour and remember someone through a skewed and untruthful lens.

The human experience is complex. Loving each other is complex. Grieving for each other is therefore complex. You can grieve for someone, and not necessarily like who they were.

To close, I’d like to give this person and anyone who might relate some practical tools that might help…

• Journaling inclined or not, writing this stuff out can help just get it out of your mind. “Where do I bloody start Amber?” I hear you say. You might want to write to them and simply lay waste. Say everything you wanted to say to them that you might have never had the chance or felt safe to. Say to them what they did or didn’t do that hurt you. You might not want to lay waste to them or feel the need/want to, but writing with the intention that they would receive this letter might help with getting started and seeing what flows. It’s up to you what you do with it after. You might want to keep it and return to it years later, you might want to post it with no stamp, you may even want to bin it or burn it (safely OBVS)

• You could write to your younger self. Write to the version of you who first felt the wound of the estrangement or difficulties in your relationship with them. You could write to your younger self from the perspective of you today and hold and soothe them for all that you lost and didn’t receive in this relationship.

• You may want to highlight someone in your life that you feel safe with to finally share how you feel. You may want to share with them your above letters or parts of it to help you along. Saying these feelings and thoughts out loud can feel petrifying in fear of being judged, so if you can’t highlight someone in your life you feel safe with, perhaps a grief group where you can share anonymously or with a therapist or counsellor might help with just getting it off your tongue for the first time.

To this person who wrote in, I thank you for your submission. To them and whomever can relate, I want to reiterate that you have every single right to grieve. Just because it might not seem as straight forward as society depicts what grief and grieving looks like, your story is valid and it is yours. No one can take that from you.

Please share in the comments below or on The Grief Gang’s Instagram post for this submission your offerings and words for this person.

If you’d like to write in to Grief Anonymous, please follow The Grief Gang on Instagram and keep your eyes peeled every Friday for the anonymous link posted on stories!