Running head: PERSONAL REFLECTION ON GRIEF 1

Personal Reflection on Grief

Taylor R. Holmes

Briar Cliff University

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Table of Contents

Personal Reflection on Grief...............................................................................................3

References............................................................................................................................9
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Personal Reflection on Grief

The form of grief I experienced was the loss (although temporary) of a relationship. In

July of 2018, my sister and I had a big fight and did not speak for almost a year. It started over a

disagreement about how she was behaving in my house. She had come to visit to get some time

away from her husband as they were having problems. We decided to have a birthday party for

her, my husband, and our friend since their birthdays were close. There was a lot of alcohol

involved and she had been flirting with a friend of my husband’s the whole night. At first I let it

go, but I ended up jokingly separating them. She got upset and left the party and ended up

leaving to go home very early the next day and did not speak to me or my husband before she

left. We had a conversation about what happened later via text, which I knew was a mistake, and

it turned into a huge blowout. I felt like she disrespected me and I’m sure she felt the same way,

so we did not talk for a couple of days. Usually, after we argue one of us sends the other a funny

post or meme and we move on like nothing happened. This time things felt strained to me even

after I tried to lighten the mood. We ended up having another big argument and blocked each

other on the phone and all our social media. After that, she just kept doing a bunch of petty stuff

that she knew would make me mad. This was hard because we have always been very close, we

are 23 months apart, so she has been my best friend forever. Of course, we argue like normal

sisters but there was never a time where we went that long without speaking. It was especially

hard because my first niece was only three months at the time so I missed out on most of her first

year because my sister would not talk to me. The grief I experienced falls more into the normal

category.

Initially, I was very nonchalant about the loss. I figured my sister would get over it and

we would go back to how we usually were. When that did not happen, my first reaction was
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anger and then it made me very sad. I often found myself venting to my husband, parents, or

friends and would end up in tears. When everything started to transpire, I found out I was

pregnant with my second child. I was angry that my sister would stop talking to me over

something so petty. I was hurt that she stopped talking to me when I needed her support the most.

The first trimester of pregnancy terrifies me, and she knows that, so I felt like she betrayed me by

adding such a crucial amount of stress to an already stressful time for me. I was angry because I

missed out on bonding with my niece. At some point in the disagreement, my sister changed my

niece’s middle name from Taylor to Isabella just because she knew I would find out and it would

hurt me. She said those exact words to me parents and our other sister. This crushed me. I was so

angry and so sad, I screamed and cried for hours after I found out.

My main source of support was my husband. He was there for absolutely everything and

kept me calm when I started to go off the rails. He is usually very nonchalant about things I get

worked up about, but he validated my feelings, helped me see things from a different perspective

and helped me process my emotions as they came. My stepfather and biological father were also

a pivotal role in my grief process. My stepdad and I have a great relationship and we talk about

everything, openly and honestly. He let me vent when I needed, kept me calm when I got too

worked up, and gave me advice that did not minimize or invalidate how I felt. My biological

father and I do have not always had a good relationship, it’s a work in process, but he really

came through when I needed him. I told him what was going on and I knew he would be able to

at least relate to not speaking to a sibling because he routinely got into huge arguments with his.

He listened to me and did not judge me for how I felt and actually gave me sound advice as well.

Surprisingly, my mother and grandmother were the least helpful in my grief process. My mother

and I have a great relationship, and she is usually the one I can count on to give me completely
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unbiased advice. However, this time I felt like she only invalidated my feelings. She kept telling

me to let it go and be the bigger person. She kept asking me to reach out to my sister and try to

talk to her. I ended up just getting frustrated and upset with my mom because I did what she

asked only to be let down every single time. My grandmother did the same thing. She kept

saying that since I am the oldest, it was pretty much my responsibility to mend the relationship. I

felt like her and my mother were not trying to understand my point of view and placed too much

responsibility on me to fix the relationship by just accepting my sister’s behavior.

While going through this grief process, I did not experience all of the stages of grief. The

stages I encountered were denial, anger, and acceptance. Kübler-Ross defines denial as a

“healthy way of dealing with the uncomfortable and painful situation” (Walter & McCoyd,

2016). During the beginning of our fallout, I believe I was in denial about the severity of the

situation. I always said, “she’ll get over it”. I often found myself truly thinking it was a bad

dream I had until my text message threads confirmed everything actually happened. Once I came

to the realization that this was not a nightmare and I actually had been in a argument with one of

my best friends and she was not speaking to me at all, I just became angry. Every time anyone

brought her up, I would get irritated. My mother, stepfather and I rarely ever argue and whenever

they brought up something about me “being the bigger person”, I found myself raising my voice

and cutting them off. Although my husband was a huge help, I would get annoyed and upset if

they had a casual conversation. I felt like she was talking to my husband just to get on my

nerves. My family says I am hard to deal with while pregnant because my siblings and I fight

more than usual, but I think my siblings take advantage of me being vulnerable. I felt like she

was taking advantage of me and like she was purposely antagonizing me because I could not and

would not defend myself like usual. I fluctuated between anger, denial and acceptance often, but
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anger seemed to be constant. Once I moved to acceptance, I just felt like our relationship would

never be the same and that was okay. I had accepted the fact that she is an adult and I could not

make her talk to me. I had to be okay with allowing her to react however she wanted to what I

said.

The theorist I related to the most in regard to the grief I experienced was Therese Rando.

In the first phase, the avoidance phase, she states that the bereaved must recognize the loss, or

acknowledge and understand it (Walter & McCoyd, 2016). While I did not initially understand

why I was suffering the loss of losing the relationship between myself and my sister, I

acknowledged it. I was not sure for a long time what caused the separation because we had been

in worse arguments prior to that and never stopped talking. It bothered me to my core that I did

not know why she was so angry with me. However, I acknowledged it and accepted that I had to

allow her the space she needed to process her own emotions. The next phase is the confrontation

phase and it is broken up into three tasks. The first task is to react to the separation by

experiencing the pain related to it, give it an expression, and mourn any secondary losses (Walter

& McCoyd, 2016). I experienced a lot of sadness and anger as a result of not speaking to my

sister. Every time I found out something new or experienced something in my pregnancy, I got

angry all over again because I could not talk to her. I cried and screamed more than I ever have

as a direct result of someone not speaking to me. I experienced and mourned the secondary loss

of not being there for my niece. I have a lot of my sister’s friends on social media and two of

them are my niece’s other godmothers. Every time they would post pictures or videos of her I

would cry because they got to experience a lot of her firsts and I just had to watch from the

sidelines without my sister knowing. My sister was there for everything when I had my first

daughter and I loved seeing them bond so when my sister got pregnant, I was ecstatic to be able
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to be that for her. My heart was broken to have that experience ripped out from under me, for

what seemed like nothing to me. Next, the bereaved must recollect and re-experience the lost and

the relationship by reviewing the relationship realistically and re-experience any emotions that

arise during this process (Walter & McCoyd, 2016). I routinely re-lived our lives to see if there

had been any instances where I had been judgmental, which was one of her reasons for blowing

up on me. I felt guilty because I knew I had, but then I was angry because I had just apologized

when my niece was born for whenever I came off as judgmental and assured her I only react that

way out of love. The final task of the confrontation phase is to relinquish any old attachments to

previous bonds and beliefs (Walter & McCoyd, 2016). I had no choice but to develop a new

normal and let go of the relationship we had. I had to move on, and this turned into me growing

much closer to my other sister and my biological father. They both assumed the role my sister

used to play, and I was grateful for that. We have maintained open and honest relationships since

then. The last phase is the accommodation phase, and it consists of two tasks. The first task calls

for the bereaved to “move adaptively into the new world without forgetting the old” (Walter &

McCoyd, 2016). I had to completely readjust my “new world” as far as family gatherings were

concerned. I had to teach myself to be okay with the new relationship between my sister and I so

I would not lash out when we were supposed to be enjoying time together as a family over

memories of how things used to be. The final task is for the bereaved to reinvest themselves into

new relationships and roles. The times I would usually confide in my sister, I used those to

engage in other relationships such as with my sister and biological father as previously

mentioned, or my cousin and her wife who have always been like big sisters to me. I made it a

point to apologize to my loved ones for anything I may have said or done in the past that they

perceived as judgment and I made an active effort to check those reactions when I noticed them.
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While this was a very hard time for me, it did result in the strengthening of other relationships

and I am grateful for that. My sister and I are speaking now, and she has apologized but our

relationship is not 100% the same as it was. I am still wary about a lot of things, but we are a

work in progress.
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References

Walter, C. A., & McCoyd, J. L.M. (2016). 2nd Edition. Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan. New

York, NY.: Springer Publishing Company.