Tonight's picture was taken on January 23, 2009. It was about two months after Mattie's second major limb salvaging surgery. A surgery that transformed Mattie's life, because in that moment he became not only a child with cancer but one who also had a physical disability. Next to Mattie was Anna, Mattie's physical therapist. Anna worked very hard at trying to get Mattie up and walking. That particular day Mattie took a few steps with this posterior walker. As you can see Anna was thrilled! However, after all of Mattie's surgeries, he never walked independently again.
Quote of the day: With research and case examples, the continuing bonds theory fundamentally changed the way we conceptualize grief (and when I say ‘we’, I mean ‘grief professionals’. I suspect this has been intuitive to grievers for thousands of years!) ~ What's your grief
My friend Denise sent me an article entitled, Continuing Bonds: Shifting the Grief Paradigm (https://whatsyourgrief.com/continuing-bonds-shifting-the-grief-paradigm/). The title alone is catchy isn't it!? So naturally I continued reading the article. The article itself is short but it does a wonderful job at introducing its reader to a whole new way of thinking about grief. I love tonight's quote from the article, because it highlights the chasm between researchers/clinicians and those of us who are grieving. Researchers/clinicians have espoused for years the importance of accepting the loss or finding a new way of living. Whereas those of us who walk with grief each day want to know WHAT IS THERE TO ACCEPT? Being asked to accept the impossible is hard to swallow, so instead intuitively over time we find ways to move forward but at the same time maintain a bond with the one who died.
Apparently continued bonds are at the core of grief counseling today. The grief book, Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (Death Education, Aging and Health Care), was published in 1996. The authors, Klass, Silverman, and Nickman, question the traditional models of grief. The book suggests that these linear models, which end in a detachment from the person we have lost, were denying a reality of how people grieve. Instead, these authors suggested a new paradigm, in which healthy grief did not resolve by detaching from a loved one, but rather in creating a new relationship with the deceased. For me, this blog and my work with the Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation are my continued bonds!
Here is the 30 second summary about continued bonds: under this model, when your loved one dies grief isn’t about working through a linear process that ends with ‘acceptance’ or a ‘new life,’ where you have moved on or compartmentalized your loved one’s memory. Rather, when a loved one dies you slowly find ways to adjust and redefine your relationship with that person, allowing for a continued bond with that person that will endure, in different ways and to varying degrees, throughout your life. This relationship is not unhealthy, nor does it mean you are not grieving in a normal way. Instead, the continuing bonds theory suggests that this is not only normal and healthy, but that an important part of grief is continuing ties to loved ones in this way. Rather than assuming detachment as a normal grief response, continuing bonds considers natural human attachment even in death.The bold text above I think is particularly poignant. Especially since it is COMPLETELY counter to the way society thinks about grief. All I know is that society's philosophy on grief did not resonate with me, and I hated when people expected me to return to NORMAL after the first year after Mattie's death. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way...... there are NO NEAT fixes, and expecting this to happen only sets up a bereaved person for failure.
It seems to me that people get edgy around those of us who have experienced a tragic loss. Yet it is my hope that the continued bond concept catches on, because then friends and family will know that the way they can truly help us is by keeping these continued bonds to our loved one alive and well.
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