The Different Paths of Grief | Aarti Patil | TEDxUTA

artificially red hair the only she could make look natural the scent of a discontinued perfume from Victoria Secret a sweater in her favorite shade of pink draped over the shoulders from the build of a woman only I could recognize from behind and she was standing right in front of me how could it be her though it couldn't it had been years and as she turned around I realized that the woman standing in front of me in the middle of the busy mall was not my mother who died years before grief is deceiving in that way it'll make you see things that aren't there and it'll make you feel things you didn't know you could maybe you've been through it before or maybe you're currently going through it but whatever the case may be I'm sure you've realized that there are no amount of books or articles to read therapy sessions to attend medications to take or even TED Talks to listen to to ever help you fully understand what you're going through but let me share with you my time to try and understand it grief pertains to loss but not just the loss of life it could be the loss of a loved pet a childhood home the end of a relationship or it could even be the loss of the person you used to be this is what makes us human we all experience grief in some way shape or form grief is not a one-and-done thing where you experience it once and you can look back on it fondly or sadly it is a building on fire and you are filled with them my biggest moment of grief came from losing my mother when I was 17 years old she passed away very suddenly and after we lost her I spent years researching on how to get over the death of a loved one how to grieve correctly and how to start and finish this process as quickly and efficiently as possible you see I wanted it out of my mind and I wanted to move on to other things so I thought to me sadness was a sign of weakness and I wanted to prove to my mother that she did not raise a weak daughter there's research that outlines grief into five different stages called the kubler-ross model it begins with denial bargaining anger depression and finally acceptance this is a very generic formula for grief and in reality grief is unique and very specific to each person you can go through any stage of grief at any point in time for any length of time you can go through them backwards you can speed through them or you can go slow you can skip stages if you need for majority of people the path of grief looks very different from what's mentioned in the kubler-ross model mine sir Shirley did mine took sharp turns and steep drops off cliffs after my mother passed away I went through a lot of different emotions but I've been able to describe them into six different feelings confusion fear stillness apathy motion and practice the first one is confusion I tend to think about my life in two different parts life before death and life after death there's a moment in time where both of these parts twist in a state of emotional limbo that manifests itself as confusion before my mother passed away I knew exactly who I was and what I was doing where I was going and how I was going to get there but after we lost her a fog rose in my previous leisure path I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it for that matter people tend to think that life after death refers to what happens to your body or your soul when somebody dies but I think it refers to how others handle life when a person dies many times confusion can turn into fear which is the next emotion I felt something that people have who have lost have a lot of or Christiane's after we lost our mother my feet were firmly planted in fear and from that fear grew questions well I turn out like her will she be proud of the person I am am i doing the right thing these are questions that follow me to this day people have a tendency to call their loved ones and ask for advice or for help but when the person who's supposed to have the answers isn't there anymore it's frightening to try and find them on your own the next one is stillness we lost our mother on a Wednesday the day before I had to take the AP u.s. History exam and I was absolutely convinced that I could not miss it for some reason so I went to school and I kept my head down and my voice though and I was able to overhear what everyone was talking about around me I heard girls talking about the dress they bought for the upcoming prom or the guys talking about the start of baseball season and I remember thinking to myself how are you able to talk about this stuff why is no one as sad as I am when you lose someone your love your whole world stands still it just takes a pause but while yours has everyone else is still moving on I was angry and I wanted to scream at them my world has stopped why hasn't yours sometimes on the anniversary of my mother's passing I'll have a test scheduled for that day or have to go into work and I'll look at everyone and want to ask how are you able to get any work done how can you keep studying don't you know what today is don't you know my mother died the next one is apathy one of the biggest things I've seen be produced from grief is bitterness it tends to be unintentional but it also is automatic the example I'm going to use falls along the lines of a common phrase finish your dinner there are children starving I had a friend who was going through a terrible breakup and she was absolutely heartbroken while she was telling me about it I suddenly snapped and I said you're so selfish how can you even talk about this don't you know that there are people worse off than you I was bitter and apathetic you see to me I had experience to lost so monumental years before that if somebody hadn't experienced something similar it didn't warrant the same kind of understanding I mentioned before stillness and the anger found in it the next emotion I felt was motion the opposite of stillness once I realized that the world doesn't stop for very long I began to shuffle my way through each day but my emotions dripped with sadness don't get me wrong I was able to laugh and have fun and enjoy myself but there were moments that were weighed down in sadness and I couldn't seem to shake it but I had to get up keep moving and push through the motion the last one is practice as time passes since loss those who have experienced it create sort of a routine in preparation for any questions concerning their loss their loved one or any uncomfortable remarks made about their particular situation I've perfected my response the questions how are you doing where's your mom and to the some sometimes insensitive jokes that are made in my presence I know the exact infliction tone an amount to say to make sure the conversation moves past my grief I realize now that the reason I practice so much is because of the embarrassment of grief Noah wants to say that someone I loved died or that what you said makes me feel uncomfortable or that no actually I'm not doing okay this is my path of grief it has taken its own turns and its own twists yours is going to look different from mine it will be unique to you but how do we get over this the grief in the morning the confusion fear anger apathy bitterness and embarrassment of it all there is no instruction for this grief is not a toy that requires assembly a lot of people say that time heals all but I don't believe that therapist and author dr. Lonnie Leary states that the great healer of our grief is not time but validation and in order for our grief to be validated it must be held by someone willing to listen to it without judgment or comparison an important characteristic of validation is realizing that even though your pain is different from mine it is still pain so my friend who went through her breakup that might have been the worst pain she had ever experienced but that does not mean it is any less important than mine grief is grief no matter the cause validation can be as simple as listening to somebody speak about their loss or about their heartache or can be as intricate as going on an Eat Pray Love type of journey my biggest moment of validation occurred a whole year after my mother passed when I was in a math class with my friend Rebecca I was wearing a t-shirt from the restaurant Chuy's from Waco Texas and had a fish on it but it said keep Waco wacko for Baylor University my friend didn't realize that it was from a restaurant and she asked me why Baylor had a shirt with a fish on it instead of replying I burst into tears I have no idea why I think it was the motion of my sadness that rose up that day she apologized she said she didn't mean to make me upset but the thing is she didn't make me upset I was already upset and in a way I'll probably always be upset but she sat there while I cried and listened to me she validated my grief by holding it without judgement or comparison for a long while after my mother passed I was rooted in my fear I had a fear that I began to forget her I had an urgency and obligation to memorialize her in any way that I could we kept her clothes that were 2 sizes too small for me her furniture that we would never use and her size 7 shoes that would never fit my size 9 feet I was carrying her memory like a burden in a backpack and it was weighing me down I didn't know how to shake it off I figured out now that I needed to take snapshots and pictures of the moments and memories I held dearest and put them in a wallet instead of a backpack I've integrated them in my life love them learn from them and I've taught them so put your memories and your loved one in your wallet rather than a backpack and pull them out when you need them those who have lost are always morning and never morning I'm in denial I'm bargaining I'm angry and I'm depressed all at once and sometimes never at all grief is not a checklist which you can just go through the steps it's a novel in which you can find the chapters you need and use them when you need one of the biggest lies about grief is that it ends in closure that if you follow each stage to its entirety you'll be cured of your sadness and can finally move on I don't believe that when you lose someone you love you never stop loving them they're forever a part of your landscape edged into the background in your memory grief isn't about finding the light at the end of the tunnel it's about learning to find the light within you the light within me manifests into three small words it will pass so I hold on to that wallet-sized photo dearly and I breathe in the scent of that discontinued perfume and I melt into the word temporary I found the light within me and one day I hope you can find the light within you thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 43,642

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Emotions

Id: jrWLYCHF4FA

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2017