What A Grief Therapist Wants You To Know About Surviving Pain

And the best books to help you through it

The art of losing isn’t hard to master…
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

As a grief therapist, I immerse myself in the atmosphere of loss every day. I don’t expect much to be permanent in life. It doesn’t mean I don’t hold the same lunatic hope for permanency that we humans hold and it doesn’t mean that change doesn’t stress me out. As far as the time of Covid unfolded (and still unfolds), and despite my “thorough” preparation, this fourteen months has taken an unexpected toll on me.

I want to confess the bad stuff about me first, because people often have the urge to tell me that I am angelic when they find out what I do. In truth, sometimes I’m really a jerk. And I say this because, sometimes I have bad boundaries, I’m a people pleaser, and don’t know when to say no. I overextend myself and I get way too much personal identity from being “of help.” In my worst moments, I have an accidental Jesus Christ Superstar complex — you know that scene when all the ailing and lepers are pulling at him and he screams, “Heal yourselves!” and the audience thinks, “Jesus was such a fucking martyr sometimes.” That is me at my worst. I am really, truly working on this.