It would appear that I’m not someone who likes to shy away from difficult topics – at least not through a screen or on a piece of paper! And there’s no sugar-coating this topic. No trying to dip my toe in gently and tiptoeing around the edges. No walking on eggshells. So, let’s go: grief and long-term illness. I have considered the topic of grief in relation to both chronic and mental illness – I think these are instances where we do experience grief but are instances where we don’t always acknowledge that we our feelings are in line with grief. 

I didn’t really ever consider what grief was until I was about 21. I knew growing up that people often ‘grieved’ after someone had died, but I’d never fully considered anything further than this. I never considered the deeper meaning. Never realised that it was actually possible to grieve for your past, to grieve for your life as you once knew it.

It took me a long time after my chronic illness diagnosis to realise that I was grieving. It wasn’t until I started regular therapy sessions that I came to class the feelings I was experiencing as grief. And that still feels slightly strange to admit, even though I’ve recognised that it’s not as black and white as I thought for some time now. In some ways we’re automatically programmed to associate grief with death – take the death of Queen Elizabeth II for example. As a country we observed a 10-day period of mourning – when you google ‘mourning’ the first two words that they acknowledge as similar are ‘grief’ and ‘grieving’. This was something that was broadcast across news outlets across the country (and, indeed, the world) and it, therefore, becomes easy to see why we make that link in our minds.

But going back to chronic illnesses – I suppose that in a roundabout way there had been death in my life when I became unwell. Just not the death of a person. My life as I knew it slowly faded out and is no longer recognisable. My social life died, as did my energy levels. My social battery has been depleted beyond recognition. So many areas of my life are now completely changed around due to my illness. 

I think it’s important to note, however, that it’s not been something that is 100% a bad thing. There are actually some things from the last five years that I wouldn’t ever want to change. I have a clear plan for a career path – if I’d stayed at university, I think I’d be working a job that I was very unhappy in now. And I’ve also met some incredible people and heard stories about other absolutely badass warriors! My closest friends are both people who I wouldn’t otherwise have met, and I genuinely couldn’t do life without either of them!

It’s definitely a journey. And a blinking difficult one at that, I’m not going to sugar-coat it and pretend that it’s all sunshine and rainbows because we all know that that’s unrealistic. But journey’s always have an end point. Maybe that’s reaching a point of acceptance that life is going to look different for the foreseeable future. But there is hope that things can feel and look different too. When we talk about grief, we often refer to the five stages that most people go through – they are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And the very fact that we move through stages (not always in that order!) is proof that its fluid and that things can be different. So hold on to that hope.

I wanted to finish with a quote from Greys Anatomy – it’s quite a long one so bare with, but it feels like the perfect finish to this post!

The dictionary defines grief as keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss. Sharp sorrow, painful regret. As surgeons, as scientists, we’re taught to learn from and rely on books, on definitions, on definitives. But in life, strict definitions rarely apply. In life, grief can look like a lot of things that bare little resemblance to sharp sorrow. Grief may be a thing we all have in common, but it looks different on everyone. It isn’t just death we have to grieve, it’s life, it’s loss, it’s change. And when we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes, has to hurt so bad, the thing we gotta try to remember is that it can turn on a dime. That’s how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can’t breathe. That’s how you survive… by remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you won’t feel this way. It won’t hurt this much. Grief comes in it’s own time for everyone. In it’s own way. So the best we can do, is try for honesty. The really crappy thing, the very worst part of grief, is that you can’t control it. The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it, when it comes. And let go when we can. The very worst part is that the minute you think you’re past it, it starts all over again. And always, every time, it takes your breath away. There are five stages of grief. They look different on all of us. But there are always five. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance

Greys Anatomy, Episode 6 Season 2

All my love,

Anna x