Three Steps To Surviving Grief
benjamin franklin famously said
in this world nothing can be said to be
certain except death
and taxes well i’m not an accountant but
i have paid the cost of experiencing
profound grief
having watched my brother go from the
prime of his life to holding his hand on
his deathbed
in our lifetime every single one of us
will experience the grief
heartbreak and loss that comes with
losing someone we love
every single one of us
that loss may be of your mum your dad
your grandparent
your friend your partner your child
no one loss is more important than the
others i’ve lost count how many times
people have said to me
i only lost my insert family member here
i can’t imagine losing my brother
my pain is not worse than your pain and
it’s important to remember that grief is
relative
everyone grieves differently and each
loss is as unique as the person who has
left us
grief is defined by the individual not
society
whatever you’re lost grief can be
devastating it can turn your life upside
down and inside out
it can eat away at you until there’s
nothing left until you feel like there’s
no way you can survive
i know because i’ve been there in the
days weeks and months before and after i
held my brother’s hand on his deathbed
but there is hope i’m going to be
sharing with you how grief changed my
life and i would change my life in a
profoundly positive way
and i’m going to be sharing with you the
many many mistakes i made along the way
to unearthing my three steps to
surviving grief
the three steps to surviving grief have
been crafted from my own personal
journey with loss
molded by the negative avoidance i
experienced and how this impacted both
myself
and those around me and born from the
positive purpose i’ve found in
channeling my grief into something that
benefits others
for those directly affected by grief my
hope is that you’ll have a better
understanding
that the negative outcomes of grief do
not have to define you
but they can help shape you in a
positive way
for those supporting someone through
grief my hope is that you’ll have a
better understanding of how to help the
person you care for
through the hardest time of their life
this is my brother robin taken at
christmas 2010
rob didn’t smoke barely drank always ate
healthily and exercised daily
he was 23 and in the prime of his life
three weeks after this photo was taken
my brother was diagnosed with a stage
four
mediastinal germ cell tumor now unless
you’ve got a medical degree have been
directly affected by this rare form of
cancer
will be forgiven for asking what the
hell is a stage four mediastinal germ
cell tumor
my brother had a tumor the size of a
grapefruit in between his heart and his
lungs
a rare form of testicular cancer that
was at the last stage of diagnosis
rob had a poor prognosis and a slim
chance of survival
as my brother was whisked away to london
to be treated by the uk’s leading
specialist
being put through several rounds of
gruelling chemotherapy that stripped his
hair
his muscle and his dignity as my mum and
dad tried their hardest to juggle
hospital with
real life and as everyone around me
tried to get their heads around this
impossible situation
i’d love to say that i was a rock an
anchor
a calm sea of helpfulness and
practicality
i’d love to say that i’d be lying
in reality i fell into a downward spiral
of drinking far too much
acting irresponsibly and not caring
about my actions or the implications of
them
i fell into what i now call negative
avoidance
avoiding my feelings avoiding dealing
with reality
and avoiding facing the impact of my
actions
on the 27th of october i was standing in
my local co-op when i received a call
from my mum
she my dad and my brother had been at
the hospital to discuss options
following months of treatment
secondary leukemia and an unsuccessful
bone marrow transplant
she simply asked are you far away
can you come home now but her voice was
breaking
it was in that moment while standing in
the juice aisle of my local co-op
that i knew my brother was dying
all hope was lost
the final weeks of my brother’s life
were split between spending as much time
as possible with my family and as
ashamed as i am to say it
doubling down on my efforts to avoid
avoid avoid
one morning in the final week of my
brother’s life at a time when i knew my
brother only had a matter of days left
on this earth
i found myself drunk in the back of my
mum’s car with my brother in the front
seat traveling to the hospice
imagine this for a second my brother was
frail
tired and literally dying and i had to
borrow his cardboard sick bucket
and asked my mum to pull over so i could
throw up in the back of our local test
codes
my brother passed away on december 10
2011
aged just 24. i held his hand to the
very end
from a drunken bereaved 22 year old to
nearly a decade later
standing here talking openly and
honestly about my experience
it’d be easy to look back at how far
i’ve come with rose tinted glasses
but that wouldn’t be doing justice to
the journey that it took to get me here
they say time is a great healer i say
[ __ ] it took more than time to get
me here it took a hell of a lot of
patience
love and support and i want to share
with you the three steps it took to turn
my negative avoidance
into positive purpose my three steps
for surviving grief step one
self-awareness understanding the impact
negative avoidance is having on your
life
and the lives of the people around you
now it should be noted that the self in
this step
is actually a misnomer no one who is
negatively avoiding their grief should
be expected to come to this conclusion
themselves
what is important is the clarifying
moment in the mind
often originating from an outside source
an intervention from friends and family
experiencing an all-time low or being
given given an ultimatum by a loved one
my moment of self-awareness came
following yet another drunken night of
avoidance
during an argument with my then
girlfriend now wife i proclaimed
i guess this is me now thankfully she
was not happy with this outcome
and swiftly replied go and get help or
i’ll leave you
in that moment i finally realized the
impact i was having on the people i
cared about most
that my grief was getting in the way of
my future and that i would lose that
future if i didn’t start to make changes
step two self-reflection having the
opportunity to talk about your grief
to address it acknowledge it and
understand it
and allowing yourself to grieve in a
healthy way
for many this outlet could be as simple
as talking to a friend
a colleague a loved one just having a
safe space
is enough for many more professional
help is needed to allow them to step
back
and reflect on what has happened to them
the impact of their actions
and how to change their behaviors and
coping mechanisms moving forwards
my self-reflection came in the form of
grief counseling
the first session was spent crying for
60 minutes
the next it was 50 then 40 and so on and
so on
by the last session we were just talking
and my counselor said
i don’t think you need any more sessions
i’m always here if you need me but
for now i’m going to sign you off i
haven’t been back since but me and my
wife have spent
years learning triggers picking up on
warning signs
and taking the time to self-reflect in a
healthy way when needed
rob’s birthday christmas time the
milestones that come round
every damn year step three
self-fulfillment accepting your new
normal and acknowledging the positive
purpose in your life
we don’t get over grief it is an illness
that we can cure
it’s an affliction that we learn to live
with and the power that we hold over
grief is the ability to learn to live
again
this can be as simple as getting out of
bed as it can be as complex
as running as a marathon for someone who
has lost a loved one
the powerful act of acknowledging the
positives no matter how small
is the very essence of positive purpose
my self-fulfillment has come in the form
of founding a charity a charity that
aims to prevent another family going
through what we did
to raise awareness reduce embarrassment
and save lives
this has been my catharsis my focus my
positive purpose
as with grief these steps are relative
to the individual not everyone drinks
themselves into oblivion to avoid their
reality
not everyone finds grief counselling
enough to support them
and not everyone sets up a charity to
fulfill themselves
and that’s okay my hope from this talk
isn’t to tell you how to grieve
my only hope from this talk is that you
don’t have to go through what i did
to make the same mistakes i did to feel
the shame
the guilt the pain of knowing that you
made a bad situation worse
or that you hurt the people you love
during the hardest time of their lives
and that you can never go back and
change the past
i hope that you learn from my mistakes i
hope that you heed my lessons and i hope
that you do
better for yourself and those around you
because you can change your future i’ll
leave you with this
it’s been said that grief is the price
we pay for love
it’s a debt that we will continue to pay
for the rest of our lives
but it need not be a crippling debt an
unmanageable debt
we need not live our life in arrears if
we can turn our negative avoidance into
positive purpose
we can manage that debt we can pay when
the bill is due and we can stop that
debt from passing to the next generation
thank you