You’ve probably heard of the 5 or 7 stages of grief. If you haven’t, the 7 stages of grief are shock, denial, anger,  bargaining (guilt), depression, testing (finding your way out) and acceptance. Colonized society doesn’t want you to face and live with your grief. It wants you to get back to work and answer “how are you?” with “I’m fine.” It wants you to show up with a smile even if you feel like garbage. It wants you to go through the neat and tidy so-called stages of grief and be done with it. So. How about we decolonize grief instead?

The problem with trying to cut and dry grief and put it into a little box with a bow is that your grief will either fester as pain inside your body or spill right out and throw you (and others) off when it suddenly pops up out of nowhere.

Society wants you to “move on,” ready or not.

I got really tired of people telling me “it’s time to move on” after I lost my son to gun violence. Ummm, move on from what exactly? What they’re really saying is, “I am super uncomfortable with your grief and what happened to your son, so I need you to stop grieving so I can feel better.” Why? Most people don’t know how to hold space or just don’t want to… which I’ll talk about in a minute here.

Whether you’re ready or not, colonized society wants you to move on and be productive on its own schedule, not yours. That’s why employees can’t get much time off to grieve and they are forced to go back to work even if they can barely function.

Here in Canada you can get up to 10 days of bereavement leave, which is better than the US at about 3-5 days. Either way, it can be harmful in some cases to go back to being productive at work in such a short time. Besides your grief, you may have to deal with paperwork, funeral arrangements, family turmoil and legal matters, or in the case of my son, the media and courts for months or years to come. You might be caring for family members who are also grieving. Those 3-10 days are a drop in the overflowing bucket of tears.

Grief doesn’t follow the rules.

The stages of grief aren’t like a staircase. Step 1, check! Step 2, check! Grief doesn’t care about human rules.

Living with grief is more like walking a hiking trail with a mix of sunshine, broken bridges, birds singing, mosquitoes, steep slopes, gorgeous flowers, muck and felled trees. Just like a trail, you never know what struggles and triggers, or even joy and laughter, you will experience along the way. It’s hard to know what will show up when.

Grief takes us on a journey of waves crashing in, sometimes tossing us around in any number of the 7 stages, and then the waves begin to get smaller and subside over time. Those waves are for letting the tears fall and releasing the pressure of some of the pain, without overwhelming us with all of the grief at once.

Decolonizing your grief can validate your experience and help you live with it in a healthy way.

First off, I need to acknowledge that decolonizing anything – including grief – goes against the grain of society, so it might feel strange and throw some people off, but it will help you come back home to yourself and deal with people’s awkward or damaging behaviour. Here are some ways you can decolonize your grief.

Hold Space for Yourself

Decolonizing your grief means holding space for YOU and for the emotions that show up. In between the waves, you can get a bit of relief and maybe even enjoy a sunshine and rainbow moment or two, if you have support and learn to be present in your body. Want help with holding space for yourself? Download my free care package.

For example, after I came out of the initial shock from my son’s death, I went to an event where the host raised some funds for me. I was having a lot of fun because I needed to be around people that night, the music was amazing and it felt good to be supported.

You are NOT betraying your grief or your loved one by having fun, laughing, smiling or doing things that bring you joy. We often need those experiences in the midst of, or in between, the heavier ones.

People came up to me at that event wanting to bring me down to their level of sadness, holding their arms out with a big sad look on their face and expecting me to do the same. It was really weird because they could clearly see I was laughing and enjoying the music, but that hug felt more like they were taking from me than giving me care and support. That’s why I decided to create some scripts and protocols…

Create Scripts and Protocols for Awkward Situations

If a stranger asked me if I have kids: “Yes, my daughter who lives with me and my son in the Spirit World.”

If someone said “there’s a reason for everything” (which really made me angry): “I don’t believe that. What I do believe is that we can harvest the teachings and blessings from every experience.” Now I use this script with my clients all the time because I know in my very bones that it’s true.

At my son’s Celebration of Life, I asked my sister to stop certain people (if I knew they were huggers or she could tell they were wanting to hug me) from coming up to hug me when I didn’t want my dam to burst.

For that awkward party situation, if I’d had a protocol, it would’ve been to not allow people to bring me down from a happy moment into sadness just to “be supported” by their expression of sadness about my loss. If I had to do that over, I’d have made sure I had someone standing with me the whole time who could stop people outside my inner circle from unintentionally hijacking me with their need to feel sad with me. I’d have asked my friend to tell them “Not now, she just wants to enjoy the music and community.” More below on having people hold space for you.

If you have a sense of what people will do or say when you’re experiencing grief, you can create scripts and protocols for yourself and for others to use to help you. I even had one for Uber drivers, in case I broke into tears randomly on the way to or from my grief support group.

Other ways to hold space for yourself…

• Journal.
• Hum to yourself.
• Listen to your favourite music (this is what brought me back from the shock of losing my son).
• Cry and if you can’t, watch sad movies to help.
• If you feel angry, find a way to get that anger out.
• Share memories with loved ones.
• Create or do something meaningful in your loved one’s memory. I birthed some songs and created my Picking Up the Pieces album in my son’s memory.
• Give yourself the time you need.

Ask Loved Ones to Hold Space for YOU

Right after my son died, I reached out to friends for support because I knew otherwise I would isolate. Some brought food, some did ceremony for me, two people made and managed a fundraiser for me and some came to court with me. Some took turns checking in on me over text or phone.

We were not trained in how to grieve or support others in their grief.

Are you getting how messy grief can be? None of us got a grief training manual as kids or even as adults, and those stages of grief have a mind of their own. So do other people.

Decolonizing grief means holding space for the grief but not having to do it alone. Over time, the emotional charge can let up, so you can cherish your memories without so much pain.

If you have kids who are grieving…

If you have kids who have experienced a loss, please help them to feel supported and understand that how they deal with grief might look completely different than how you are. After I lost my adoptive parents one after the other as a teenager, I didn’t know how to get through it, until I got support years later.

The adults in my life had no capacity to support us grieving kids. At school after my  mom died, I disappeared to avoid the kids who were spreading nasty rumours about my mom’s suicide. After losing my dad to a massive heart attack (my mom was already gone), I journaled, did a lot of horseback riding and partying, quit college halfway through and moved to Toronto to start fresh.

When my son died, I got separate grief counseling for myself and my daughter and I joined a homicide loss support group. I checked in with my daughter occasionally to make sure she knew I loved her, and that I was here for her in whatever ways I could be.

You deserve to be supported in ways that feel helpful to you.

Decolonizing your grief means giving yourself as much time, love and care as possible, and feeling what you feel when you can allow yourself to feel it.

Decolonizing your grief means it’s on your terms wherever possible. Of course if you have no choice but to go back to work or school after a few days off, you do what you need to do, but when you are at home or people come to visit, or you’re socializing, it is truly your time to feel supported, and it is your right to ask for that support HOW you need it, or even to ask someone else to ask for support on your behalf if needed.

If you don’t have anyone to lean on for support, or even if you do, you can look up a bereavement group or organization in your area. I got homicide loss support through Distress Centres of Greater Toronto. They also have suicide loss support and the suicide hotline for Canada. If you’re in BC, you can try Lumara or BC Bereavement Helpline.

Grief takes a lot of energy from you. It’s okay for you to ask someone else to search for support for or with you. If you have lost someone to homicide, or you’ve lost a child, more support is here for you.

Nobody should have to grieve alone and colonial society does not get to dictate your grief experience. You do.