Grief is like an emotional wound to the heart. Imagine you have a wound to your heart; it's bleeding and it hurts so you put a plaster on it. The bleeding stops and for a while the plaster is covering the wound. On the outside, there are no longer any visible signs of the wound (pain of your grief) but underneath, the pain is very real and the heart feels broken.
Now, imagine taking that plaster straight off…the result would be that your heart has not healed and it will then continue to bleed and be painful. Like a wound, grief takes time to heal, we need time to get over the pain and the initial shock of our loss and we cannot just simply ‘get over it'.
Like a wound, if we simply left our wounded heart unattended, the pain may increase or get worse, so sometimes, we need a little extra help to help us recover and just like a physical wound, we sometimes need a little more support to help us through the Healing process.
Talking to a bereavement counsellor, a support service, a friend or family member can be part of that Healing process. Over time, you can start to take off the plaster, a little bit at a time. When the plaster comes off completely, the initial pain may have lowered but there is a scar left by the grief and that scar stays with us for life.
Occasionally, when something triggers our grief, the scar hurts for a while and we are reminded of our loss and the pain we felt and still feel. Our emotional scars make us who we are, they are a reminder of the grief we have experienced but also they are a reminder of the physical and emotional strength it takes to heal after a bereavement.
