"Moving On" Versus Carrying a Loss Forward

If you are currently grieving, or have grieved a major loss at some point in your life, you have likely heard the phrase “moving on” many more times than you’d like.

Our Dominant Culture Promotes “Moving On”

Here in North America, there’s a general cultural expectation of clean, tidy endings, “overcoming” problems and using a “mind over matter” approach.

Doesn’t that seem sterile and unfeeling? But it’s true.

And our invisible cultural ideas about quick fixes seems to promote some interesting ideas about “moving on” during grief.

Namely, many grievers bump against the idea that when their person dies, or an important part of their identity or life ends, it is “best” to quickly move on and propel oneself forward into the future.

The Reality of “Moving On”

For many folks, the idea that loss calls for an immediate focus on “moving on” largely goes unnoticed and unquestioned.

Until a loss actually implodes in their life.

When it’s your brother or sister, your mother or father, or your dear friend who has died…the idea of “moving on” and quickly finding closure is often revealed for the ludicrous proposition it actually is.

We don’t love deeply and then quickly brush that love aside when our person dies.

Likewise we don’t embrace an identity, or a part of our life (such as a cherished job) and then merely shrug our shoulders and “move on” when it dissolves.

Rather, when we have loved a person, or invested ourselves deeply in something, grief is a natural response to the loss of that person or part of our life.

What Does Grieving Actually Look Like (If “Moving On” Isn’t a Reasonable Expectation)?

Grieving is mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.

According to the grief theorist, William Worden, grief is a messy process of:

- accepting that the loss really happened (which can take longer than one may realize)

-fully feeling the pain of the loss

-adapting to the new reality after the loss

-finding a way to honor what was lost and carry it forward into the future.

There are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to grieving a loss.

There’s no set timeline and it doesn’t happen in 3 days, or a week, or a month for most people.

So, when we find ourselves deep in grief, the casual suggestions of those around us to “move on” or “find closure” can feel incredibly startling, invalidating, confusing and out of touch with our experience.

Sometimes a griever can even start to question their own experience, wondering if they are normal or if they are grieving “correctly” or not.

An example: On a day when the grief isn’t as heavy, a griever enjoys a lighthearted moment and actually laughs for the first time since the loss. It’s possible that a friend or acquaintance might say, “Oh, it’s good to see you smile again. I’m so glad you are moving on and finding closure.”

The assumption: that the griever is “all better” because they were observed in an “up” phase of the emotional roller coaster of grief.

Assumptions that quickly “moving on” is even possible can be so confusing and invalidating for grievers.

And it can feel downright devastating when a griever is told they appear to have “moved on” just because they were doing okay at a single point of time on one given day.

What grief actually looks like is a jumbled ball of feelings.

What grief actually looks like is a cocoon - a liminal space where life has dissolved and the path forward is not clear yet.

What grief actually looks like is a roller coaster.

A Major Loss Changes Us - We Carry It Forward

Rather than focusing on “moving on” or “finding closure”, it can be more helpful to think about allowing the loss to change us and to focus on how we will carry our loss forward with us.

In a culture that promotes the idea of clean endings and “pushing forward”, what a griever often actually needs is encouragement to do the opposite:

- to let it be messy

-to be gentle with themself

-to allow themselves to be changed by the process

- to imagine the possibility of carrying the loss forward instead of banishing it to the past.

I’ve seen the difference between trying to “move on” and allowing oneself to “carry it forward” time and time again as a grief counselor (I interned at a Hospice in my final year of graduate school and currently work as a therapist).

I’ve also seen this play out in my Grief Massage work, holding space for clients who are dealing with the stress and pressure of cultural ideas about “moving on” from a loss.

I have come to believe that cultural ideas about quickly “moving on” and and finding “closure” are a huge factor in why grieving is such a stressful experience for so many people.

I like to imagine a future where our culture shifts and changes, where honoring grief and loss becomes the default. Where ideas about “moving on” and finding final “closure” fall by the wayside.

What if we could embrace the idea that we won’t snap back to the person we were before a loss?

What if that was ok?

What if we were given permission to be ok sometimes and not ok other times?

What if we understood that grief is a roller coaster with many ups and downs?

What if we all learned that grief is messy and “moving on” is not a helpful phrase?

Why This Matters for Grief Massage Practitioners

If you are a Grief Massage practitioner, or you are thinking about training to become one, understanding the cultural aspects of grief-stress is vital.

It’s important to have an awareness of how our dominant culture has influenced your own ideas about “moving on” and finding “closure” after a loss.

This will help you understand the challenges that may come up when you attempt to hold a truly safe and accepting space for grievers.

In the outside world (outside the safety of a Grief Massage treatment room, or a counselors office, or a grief support group), many grievers feel they have to wear a mask and pretend to be “okay” - to have “moved on” or “found closure”.

Even though Grief Massage is a totally body-based experience and not a form of counseling, your attitudes about grief will still impact your client’s experience.

It can be hard to hold a safe and accepting space for a Grief Massage client if you have unexamined ideas about how long grief “should” last or how grief “should” look.

There are some wonderful resources available for exploring cultural aspects of grief and loss. Some of my go-to’s are Megan Devine’s book “It’s OK That You’re Not OK” and website (www.refugeingrief.com), What’s Your Grief (www.whatsyourgrief.com) and Modern Loss (www.modernloss.com).

Our comprehensive Grief Massage training program also weaves cultural grief awareness into many aspects of the experience. Class 1 in the 5 part series (“Grief, The Body and the Nervous System”) devotes a great deal of time to exploring cultural grief-stress and its impacts.

Click here if you’d like to learn more about Class 1.