Tear Soup Cooking Tips
Reprinted from Tear Soup, a recipe for healing after loss
Grandy’s Cooking Tips
•Grief is the process you go through as you adjust to the loss of anything or anyone important in your life.
• The loss of a job, a move, divorce, death of someone you love, or a change in health status are just a few of the situations that can cause grief.
• Grief is both physically and emotionally exhausting. It is also irrational and unpredictable and can shake your very foundation.
• The amount of “work” your grief requires will depend on your life experiences, the type of loss, and whatever else you have on your plate at that time.
• A sudden, unexpected loss is usually more traumatic, more disruptive and requires more time to adjust to.
• If your loss occurred through violence, expect that all the normal grief reactions will be exaggerated.
• You may lose trust in your own ability to make decisions and/or to trust others.
• Assumptions about fairness, life order, and religious beliefs are often challenged.
• Smells can bring back memories of a loss and a fresh wave of grief.
• Seasons, with their colors and climate, can also take you back to that moment in time when your world stood still.
• You may sense you have no control in your life.
• Being at work may provide a relief from your grief, but as soon as you get in the car and start driving home you may find your grief come flooding back.
• You may find that you are incapable of functioning in the work environment for a short while.
• Because grief is distracting it also means you are more accident-prone.
• The object of grieving is not to get over the loss or recover from the loss but to get through the loss.
• Over the years you will look back and discover that this grief keeps teaching you new things about life. Your understanding of life will just keep going deeper.
** To use these tips in your publications or workshops please make sure the following byline is included.** Reprinted with permission from Grief Watch Copyright © Grief Watch 2011. All rights reserved. Tear Soup Copyright © Grief Watch 1999 Portland, Oregon USA www.griefwatch.com