Why Do We Suck at Grief?

Addressing a seriously painful question and an announcement - my Forrest Gump moment (sort of)

“This is going to be the coldest experience you ever have in your life.”

Let me be clear - I don’t recall if these were the exact words that were said to Alyssa and me the morning of December 28th, 2023. But I do remember everything else very clearly about the scene, and the one that was to come. Our lives had been suddenly split into a before and an after of losing a child, and we were about to inject ourselves back into a world that was still moving fast and felt cold and uncaring.

Alyssa and I stood in our small room in the Ronald McDonald house at the hospital in Minneapolis the morning after Lucy had passed away with our assigned social worker and a child life specialist. Both of them had been instrumental in guiding us through the dizzying journey of navigating a NICU stay during Lucy’s life. But after Lucy passed, and we had to leave the hospital, they were no longer permitted to join us on our journey. So I asked the last of hundreds of questions that we posed to them in our time together,

“We just take our clothing bags and walk out of the hospital and that’s it?”

And the response was accurate. It was the most chilling and cold experience that one could imagine. Our foundational and innocent dreams of building a family together were completely upended and we were thrust back into the world fully unprepared for what to do next.

Thankfully, we had family. And thankfully, we had many of you who have stayed engaged and kept up with this weird and somewhat undefinable project since it started about a year ago. Alyssa and I were lucky, and we realize that. But even so, we have largely had to figure out how to navigate the treacherous waters of grief as individuals and as a couple without much of a map. We certainly had love and support, but it was clear that all of us involved in any manner felt lost.

Crossing the one year mark of losing Lucy, Alyssa and I felt a new purpose and a growing sense of peace. In the time since feeling like we have passed through to calmer waters, I have been thinking and reflecting on our journey. There is one realization that I have from our raw experiences that is magnetically pulling me in a direction to explore further.

We have forgotten how to grieve.

Something has happened over time, where we, in the esteemed and superior Western Civilization, have lost the art and the process of incorporating loss and hardship back into our lives in a healthy and growth-oriented manner. Put another way - we suck at grief and dealing with hardship.

I have a growing curiosity to understand why this has happened as well as what we can do about it given the constraints and realities of today’s world that we live in. Because nothing is closer to a guarantee than the reality that we will all face times of suffering, loss and grief in our lives.

As I have written about before, understanding the ‘why?’ behind something isn’t necessary for progress or for healing. Yet there comes a point in time, only when healing has taken strong root and progressed in your life, that facing the question of why becomes too much to ignore any longer.

So, I plan to pursue this understanding further. I plan to turn this new pursuit into something much larger in the near future, but for now, I am going to drop breadcrumbs of what I am discovering and learning here on the Chapter 3 Stigma page. I have learned that recovery from loss and recovery from alcoholism are one in the same. Both require the reorientation of a life after having some vision of the future greatly disrupted.

This is also me recognizing my Forrest Gump moment that I called out early in the creation of Chapter 3 Stigma. For over a year I posted at least once per week, largely to hold myself accountable and keep progressing in our healing journey. But, we have come to a new stage, and to give this work everything that I have I am loosening the expectations that I have on myself for creating content for this page in particular.

I still have a desire to write and provide content related to addiction, recovery and navigating the road of integrating events into your life in a productive manner. But I am going to give myself the grace to slow down here so that I can focus more fully on this new pursuit.

Every single one of you has been an imperative part of my family’s and my own healing journey over these last years. I cannot thank you enough for that. I am excited to pursue answers to this question that Alyssa and I lived through with the hope of one day providing an understanding of where we, as a greater society, lost our abilities to handle grief and support those going through difficult times. I ultimately aim to build people a roadmap that they can use against the backdrop of our world that we live in when moments come up in life that cause someone to have to navigate the treacherous waters of grief.

I want people to feel that they are not alone, mapless and helpless.

All the best, and all my love,

Kyle