 While it is true that people require "air, food, water, clothing, and shelter,” in order to survive, we must also add "relationships" to this list because it is a rare person who is able to thrive in the absence of intimate relationships with other people, places, and things.
Grief is the process and emotions that we experience when our important relationships are significantly interrupted or (more frequently) ended, either through death, divorce, relocation, theft, destruction, or some similar process. A related term, “bereavement”, has different meanings for different people, but all meanings refer to the grieving process. While some view bereavement as a specific subtype of grief that occurs when a loved one (usually a spouse) dies, others think of the term as referring to the period of time during which grief is felt and losses are dealt with.
Grief starts when someone or something we care about is lost to us. We do not grieve for all lost relationships; instead, we grieve only for those that have become important to us over time. These can be relationships with people that we have strong connections to, such as family members, spouses, significant others, and friends; places we feel attached to, such as the house we grew up in or our hometown; or things that are important to us, such as love letters, a watch that a grandparent gave us, etc. We may have loved or hated that person, place, or thing, but we feel grief when they (or it) ar... Continue Reading This Article
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