“Good grief,” my mom used to say.
What a funny phrase, “good grief.” I find myself saying it sometimes. All these years later, regurgitating my mother’s phraseology.
It doesn’t really seem to mean anything – one of those throw-away expressions that we all intuitively understand.
I said it the other day when something frustrated me, and it made me want to look up the origin of the phrase. Where did it come from? Does it have anything to do with grief itself?
It turns out that the expression is something called a ‘minced oath’, a euphemism used to replace a curse word or invocation of the Lord’s name. According to this source, “good grief” came about to replace “Good God” or “Good Lord”.
For my mom, “good grief” was her expression of exasperation. Those were the words that came out after all reasonableness had been exhausted. It’s when I knew that she had tried everything she could and surrendered to some unfortunate circumstance. It meant that there was nothing left to do but humbly accept reality and move on.
And that’s what real grief is: exasperation, resignation, and acceptance. Whether intentionally or not, my mom was talking about actual grief.
We often think about grieving when someone dies, but it can be applied to the loss of almost anything. You could lose an opportunity, or money. You could lose a friendship, or a romantic partner. You could lose a way of living – a habit or routine. All of these losses require a grieving period.
For a long time, I looked at grieving as a passive activity. A haphazard period of time after a loss when things felt like shit and it took a while to get over it. And then, eventually, the void from the loss subsided. I never had any organization or ritual for it.
A few years ago, I was dealing with a particularly intense set of personal losses. These were the types of losses that you can’t grieve passively. I couldn’t just “get over it”. I needed a more organized approach, and a deeper understanding of grief.
I started reading about grief and learned about the five stages of grief: disbelief & denial, anger & blame, bargaining, sadness & depression and acceptance.
As I tend to do with complex subjects, I drew out a diagram to better understand the five stages.
During my study of grief, I learned two overarching points about the five stages: (1) it’s really easy to jump around between stages 1-4 without fully completing each stage, and (2) you can’t get to stage 5 without completing the first four stages.
My goal with this diagram was to give myself a roadmap to get from one stage to the next methodically, building momentum so that it feels like I’m rolling downhill. I try to follow the “jedi path” as marked in purple in the diagram. This is the pathway to acceptance, and acceptance is the freedom to move forward.
Here’s my explanation of the diagram:
Disbelief & Denial
The first stage, disbelief & denial, is jarring. This is when the loss is the freshest, and everything hurts. The wound is open. Emotions are raw. I learned from Charlie Munger that denial is a psychological superpower, so I try to accept that I will go through a stage of denial however irrational it may seem.
Here, I remind myself that denial is just my mind tricking me to avoid the pain of loss – trying to protect me. But that pain avoidance comes at the cost of me living in a false reality – that the loss didn’t actually occur.
I try to make this stage quick. I try to accept the pain for what it is. No need to prolong the grieving process by living in delusion. Let’s get the ball rolling downhill along the Jedi path.
Anger & Blame
The next stage, anger & blame, comes naturally to most of us. We want to find a source for our loss – something to point to. It makes us feel better. But as natural as it may be, dwelling in anger & blame is as equally irrational as the delusional denial in stage 1. Pointing fingers over a loss, even at oneself, just prolongs the pain over time.
During this stage, my solution is to set a time limit. I tell myself: “I’ll give myself three hours to be angry about this, and then I’m moving on.” And then I get it all out. I go to the gym and hit the heavy bag. I call a close friend and gripe about the loss. I allow myself to feel angry, but I give it a shot clock.
And then, I sit down to meditate and let the anger subside – resettling on the Jedi path.
Bargaining
The next stage, bargaining, is where we waste a ton of energy. This is where we try to talk ourselves out of the pain. We try to rationalize why the loss happened. We try to strike a bargain with ourselves, or the world, to lessen the blow.
You’ll note the squiggly line between the bargaining stage and the anger & blame stage. I’ve found that the feelings created by these two stages often overlap. Once you start bargaining with yourself, it’s easy to slip into anger. It’s easy to jump back and forth here.
During this stage, my solution is to play game theory with myself on paper. I write down the arguments I’m having with myself and earnestly try to make sense of them – trying to connect them with some previous action that can logically explain how I ended up with the loss. “If I had only done this, I wouldn’t be feeling this way,” I say to myself. Of course, my arguments never make sense. This shows me my own irrationality in a visceral way. By reading my own illogical bargaining arguments, it shows me the internal turmoil I’m experiencing and helps me realize that it’s not serving me to keep arguing with myself.
For those with high intellect, this stage can be really hard to get past. Writing it down is the only way, for me, that I’ve been able to quickly realize that I can’t think my way through loss. Only when I see my own words on paper can I move past the internal bargaining going on in my head.
Sadness & Depression
The next stage, sadness & depression, used to be the hardest for me.
I don’t like feeling sad. I don’t like signifying the end of something. I associate those feelings with failure, even when I’m losing something that’s not helping me go forward. It makes me feel weak, even though the vulnerability ends up making me stronger. Quite the paradox.
For this stage, I needed a ritual – something to grease the wheels and keep the ball rolling downhill. This is where I turn to the coffee can.
In The Last Dance – a documentary series about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ string of NBA championships in the 1990s – coach Phil Jackson talks about a grieving ritual that he used with the team when he knew they were coming to the end of their time together.
The ritual was this: each team member wrote a heartfelt goodbye letter to the team, read it aloud in front of the group, and then lit it on fire and placed it in a coffee can. The burning represents finality – the end point.
I tried it for myself and have found it extremely useful ever since. Whenever I feel my aversion to sadness creeping up – when I’m avoiding the pain of loss during a period of grief – I write a letter to whatever I’m losing. It could be a person. It could be a place. It could be a chapter of my life that has come to an end. Whatever it is, I write it a letter and express my true feelings. I say goodbye.
I almost always cry when I read it.
And then I fold up the letter, light it on fire, and watch the flames curl up from the coffee can.
For really heavy losses, sometimes I have to repeat this ritual until I’m no longer feeling really strong emotions. I write as many letters as I need to, until the tears stop.
Acceptance
If the first four stages have been given their just due, the final stage – acceptance – takes care of itself.
Acceptance is the only passive stage for me. It’s the go-forward stage – the open road for moving on.
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I added a phrase at the bottom of the diagram that I picked up from Ray Dalio: “pain plus reflection equals progress”. This neatly summarizes what grieving is for me.
I try to allow myself to feel pain, rather than avoiding it. Hint: the first three stages are largely about pain avoidance.
Then I reflect on that pain and all of the events that led up to it. Watching the burning flames from the top of the coffee can really helps me with this.
And then I resign myself to accepting the loss, however painful it feels in that moment.
Only then can I progress to the next chapter of my life.
So my mom’s saying “good grief” had a deeper meaning after all. It wasn’t just a minced oath; it was her expression of accepting sucky situations.
And it was instructive: Good. Grief.
Grieving isn’t fun, but it’s good for us. It’s necessary. And whenever I’m struggling with loss, I pull out my grieving diagram and follow the jedi path. It gets easier every time.