The business of grief

"Grief is a process unique to each individual. No one can tell you how long and in what manner you should grieve. However....." begins a letter from a Bereavement Services & Program Development Center.

I have had it with the "howevers". Grief counseling has made grief a profession. A business. There is a process, an agenda, an all knowing knowledge. A road map, a plan and it is set. With markers, and dates, and warnings. The idea of the individual seems to have been forgotten.

Their language. Semantics. Definitions. Interpretations. There are phases, stages, curves and wheels. And they fit you into them. Nice and tidy. Where is the individual experience?

I'm not doing well with the rules, guidelines and warnings I'm encountering in talking with various grief experts. Wait at least three months before participating in a group. Anniversaries are looming events you have to watch out for. You think you are doing fine now? Just wait 'til 3 months, then six months, a year, two years. These are big milestones. Think you have reached rock bottom? Well you haven't.

What happens if an individual has milestones that come at 2-1/2 months and 5 months? Or 4 months 1 week? What if you don't adhere to observing anniversaries and live day by day, moment by moment. I refuse to be stuffed into their pigeon holes.

I'm sure they have their empirical data to support what they say. But data is data. And to create a structure there are the highs and lows that are tossed out. The individuals.

Physics has shown that in observation of particles, the particles perform as the observer expects! Think about that. Individuality is lost, and you fulfill their predictions.

The latest last straw was when I described what I'm going through as a roller coaster. And a professional grief counselor corrected me that it is not a roller coaster! And she went on to describe what it looks like. Her interpretation. No doubt from years of experience. But NOT mine.

Excuse me, whose grief are we talking about? I don't know what I'm experiencing? I don't know how to describe how I feel?!?!?!!?