What Abi Taught Us (3 page)

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief was the only bereavement model I knew about at the time of Abi's death.
⁵
Based on her research working with terminally ill patients (and devised as a model of
their
common reaction to dying), it is well recognised, and most people seem to be able to name a few of the stages.

While I found it helpful to understand that denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are frequent reactions to grief, and that ‘most people experience these five stages at some point', I found Kübler-Ross's model insufficient for my needs. I wanted to be an active participant in my grieving process, focusing my limited attention and energy on the things I could
do
to support my wellbeing at this vulnerable time. Aware of the statistics (I was told we were now prime candidates for divorce, family estrangement and mental illness), I became determined to
actively
employ all the psychological strategies my traumatised brain could recall to help steer us through the turmoil of those first few days and weeks, let alone the months ahead.

Talk of five-year recovery timelines for parental bereavement filled me with dread. If Abi's death had taught me anything, it was that life is random and absurdly precious. I had two teenage boys still at home; I could not afford to miss five years. I'd also read the research studies indicating that while the majority of children demonstrate resilience—successfully adapting and recovering to full functioning even when exposed to the most acute forms of trauma and chronic adversities—the biggest threat to those kids was losing their family security and family connections. I vividly recall standing by the oven while a screaming voice inside urged me to ‘choose life, not death'. Don't lose what you have to what you have lost.

So began my journey to see if, by deliberately employing strategies known to promote wellbeing and resilience, I could
return to normal functioning more quickly. Putting aside all the dreams and hopes for my old life, and focusing on a new goal of ‘mainly functioning', I considered what I had learned through my job as a researcher and my practical experience through the quakes that might possibly be useful to us now. When faced with such an extreme reality, could I exert any control, could I actively assist the grieving process, or was I indeed powerless in the face of such overwhelming odds?

My personal journey, over the months since Abi, Ella and Sally died, has convinced me that there is currently very little mainstream awareness of the psychological tools that can assist with grieving. Nobody seems to have applied the wealth of research and proactive psychological techniques from the world of wellbeing and resilience science to this context. George Bonanno, whose work I refer to in this book, is one of the few pioneering researchers pursuing this line of scientific inquiry. However, his findings have yet to have a significant impact on the mainstream public. Ask anyone what they know about grief and loss, and it's the five-stages model, not Bonanno's studies indicating the substantial numbers of resilient grievers, that they'll tell you about.

Fearful of being accused of applying additional pressures on the bereaved, mainstream grief advice maintains its experience-focused stance and its ‘anything goes' approach. As a result, most mourners are unaware that there are things they can do that assist the process of healthy bereavement. When wellbeing science has proved that the way we choose to think and the way we choose to act have a substantial influence on our wellbeing, and resilience studies have shown how most people naturally bounce back from all sorts of traumas (including bereavement),
it struck me as time to test the effectiveness of my own research field on my personal trauma.

I freely acknowledge that many mourners won't want to adopt a self-help approach to bereavement, but it is also my experience that many do. This book aims to give those people a range of evidence-backed tools to experiment with, to support their gradual return to living fully engaged and meaningful lives.

Trevor and I agreed from the outset that, if we were going to try to return to normal as quickly as we could, that did not mean we were going into denial. If we did this (went back to work, went out and socialised, carried on with our lives), then we had to promise ourselves that when we felt like shit we'd admit it. We still do. When we want to cry, we will let ourselves. When we want to leave somewhere because staying on seems too futile, we'll get up and go. No questions asked, no explanation required. When we want to stay in bed, we'll do that too.

Throwing yourselves into recovery doesn't mean hiding from grief, pain, misery, aching. It just means you go with the present experience—when these emotions come, you open up to them and let them in—but you choose to get up in the morning and get out in the knowledge that, if you want to win this fight for survival, you've got to step up and take control.

We had no choice in Abi's death, but I believe we do have choices in the way we grieve, and that exerting intentional control over our thoughts and actions helped us weather those
terrible first six months, and have continued to be useful as months begin to turn into years. Borrowing again from Viktor Frankl: ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.'
⁶
While my way may not be your way, I have included here the strategies (ways of thinking and acting) that many others have used to nurture their personal resilience in the face of adversity.

Because the passage of time undoubtedly plays its own role in our journey through grief, this book is divided into two parts.
Chapters 2
–
11
concern
Recovery
, and contain strategies I found helpful in the immediate aftermath of the girls' deaths. The remaining chapters focus on
Reappraisal and Renewal
as we start to reassess our lives in the wake of our loss, and consider the myriad ways to honour our loved ones and move forward into the future without them there. Grieving is no linear progression (meaning, you don't start at A and work your way to Z); it's more like an exhausting, frustrating and ghoulish game of Snakes and Ladders (back and forth, up and down). Your grief is unlikely to follow the same progression as mine, so just dip in and out, read back and forth, take your time and find which pieces of grief 's jigsaw work for you. The pieces that helped me make sense of this terrible puzzle are brought together in my own Resilient Grieving Model shown in
Chapter 17
. By all means skip forward and take a look, but it is likely to make more sense once you've read right through.

Chapter 2

Six strategies for coping in the immediate aftermath

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING
the death of someone you love, plenty of advice will be offered. Among the debilitating symptoms of depression and anxiety, the following strategies were the ones that helped me.

There are no rules—do what you need

In the immediate aftermath of the girls' deaths, Trevor and I were very clear that there were no rules we had to follow. As Thomas A. Edison is said to have remarked: ‘There are no rules here—we're trying to accomplish something.' When that something is as fundamental as survival, life's normal regulations don't apply. You're in the driver's seat: you're the one who
counts, the one who has to survive. You have carte blanche to do whatever it takes for you to get through the first few days and weeks. Sleep all you want, do what you want, feel what you want. No one can tell you how to behave or act.