Grief and Acceptance - Part XII

When grieving the loss of a thing (e.g., jewelry, job, limb), exploring how much the lost thing mattered may be healing. Why? 

Assessing how much the lost item mattered may lead you to see the loss as minor. If so, this realization alone may lead you to feel dramatically better. All is well.

If you experience dissonance -- i.e., if you continue to feel sad while perceiving the loss as minor -- exploring why the lost item mattered may lead you to insights that explain your surprisingly strong feelings. 

Importantly, such insights may prompt you to pursue Step 3 of Healthy Survivorship: Take effective action. For example, realizing how the loss affected you may lead you to...

• Give voice to your grief, no matter how overblown it seemed at first to you (or still seems to others)
• Take steps to replace the lost item, if reasonable.
• Do things in new ways that compensate for the loss, if possible.

As shared repeatedly on this blog, "It matters less what you feel than what you do with what you feel." 

In general and all other things being equal -- including how much the lost item mattered -- I would expect the difficulties of getting through grief to be greater...

The less the likelihood you can replace or compensate for what was lost.

The greater the effort or pain required to replace or compensate for what was lost, if replacing or compensating is even possible.