What is grief of growth? Signs we should know about | Health

Grief is a personal feeling. Often grief cannot be expressed in words, it can be due to a lot of things – estrangement, death, or sometimes, absence of a person. Grief is extremely strong, and it can creep into our mind and heart and affect our emotional health. “With any change (even the one we welcome) comes grief. We will grieve the childhoods we had (or didn’t) as we mend and air out the wounds. We will grieve the old stories, identities and relationships we needed to shed in order to create space for the new. We will grieve the unhelpful all-too-familiar coping mechanisms that often became our only friends. We will grieve the plans and future we had envisioned that will no longer be. We will grieve. And we will grow,” wrote Therapist Maria G Sosa.

Here are a few signs of grief of growth:

ALSO READ: What does healing look like, in unruly and unpredictable grief?

We’re now on WhatsApp. Click to join

Difficulty in connecting: In childhood, we connected with our family members and friends very easily. But with time, as we grew apart, connecting back with them and sharing intimate details about our lives became very difficult. This distance and the pain of watching our near ones go far from us can be heavy.

Feeling lost: Between the zone of who we are and the zone of who we want to be, there lies a grey space which can be very confusing to be in. In that space, we often feel lost. We are unable to go back in time, and the feeling of not going forward makes us feel helpless.

Experiencing loneliness: Grief of growth also brings with it thick loneliness. People who become strangers. Decisions that change lives and relationships and misunderstandings can make us feel extremely lonely.

Missing parts of ourselves: We all shed parts of our personalities and characters as we embark on the journey of achieving more. Yet, we miss those parts that bind us to home and made us feel as if we belonged somewhere.

Guilty of success: When we achieve a lot of things in life and look back and feel that the family members have not been able to achieve that much, it can make us feel guilty about our accomplishments.