Grief Support Systems
Challenges, Crossroads
In his book “Never Finished,” David Goggins tells the story of the Leadville Trail 100 Run (aka The Race Across The Sky) in 2019. In his book Goggins describes how, as the race went on, a support person who was following him and had poles with them offered him the chance to use them. Although Goggins was aware that he could use poles in the race, he decided against doing so because the last time he participated in the race, poles were not permitted. According to Goggins, using the poles was equivalent to cheating. As the story unfolds, he describes how he vehemently opposed his support person’s recommendation that he makes use of the poles. In the end, he decided to give them a shot, and he utilized them for the remainder of the race; this choice resulted in a huge improvement in his performance.
Goggins considers the race to be a win, although I would disagree with that assessment. The win — the hardest thing he had to overcome — was his own ego — shown in his unwillingness to use trekking poles. It takes bravery to look at the views that drive our choices, particularly when, like Goggins, you have been public about those views.
As I write this, I am facing the same challenge with two of my views:
· The psychiatric approach to grief (and how we have been misled by our culture about how grief and loss work).
· Emotional support animals (which, in my humble opinion, continues to be populated with scamsters and fraudsters).
In my book, “Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief” and in many of these articles and podcast appearances about grief I have been critical about how society responds to this emotion. We, in our ignorance, approach grief as though it were a problem to be solved, a hurdle to be surmounted, or an obstacle to be conquered. We arbitrarily quantify grief with a stopwatch and have the expectation that it will disappear after a certain amount of time; when it doesn’t, we diagnose it, medicate it, and treat the grieving as if they are injured in some manner. We shift our support, abandoning those who need us, treating them as invisible, and blaming them for not “moving on” or “turning the page.”
Grief, like any other emotion, is a natural part of the human experience. Grief is simply the price of admission for a life that is lived to its fullest and most profound potential. There are only two “problems” with grief: when we resist it and when we fuel it. This are the same problems we could have any emotion. It’s not the feeling itself that’s the issue here. An emotion is just an emotion. The problem is resisting and avoiding that emotion or fueling that emotion with our thoughts and actions.
In my book, “Determining Marijuana Use in the Age of Legalization,” I decry the current wave of legalization across the country and the breakneck rate of passing legislation without considering the longer-term issues. When it comes to the difficulty of determining an initial level of intoxication after consuming marijuana in one form or another, I have some very strong reservations and criticisms. The varying labeling across different marijuana products is something that I have strong opinions about. I am sharply critical of the medicalized sales propaganda (e.g., terms like “dosing” and “dispensaries”) used throughout the industry.
In this last area, in particular, I have talked about the legislation as seeds that are being planted that will eventually permit people to get stoned at work because they need their “medicine.” When I directly compared them to the lax regulations around service animals and emotional support animals, I found that both sets of regulations were lacking. The uninformed efforts many years ago has not only created a cottage industry of fraudulent service animal paraphernalia from vests to cards to letters and certificates on the Internet but has created a situation where people were bringing their emotional support peacocks, alligators, horses and more on public transport including airplanes.
Now I find myself at a crossroads around these two issues.
The Changing Face of Support — COVID
Maybe things would have been different if it weren’t for COVID. Maybe not. I don’t have a track record of multiple intense losses to compare.
In my book, “Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief,” I include a section called “Grief Unplugged.” This is an unedited journal I kept throughout the first few months after my husband of 31 years, Brian, died. The book is part analysis of how our society responds to grief, part instruction manual of how to use three specific meditation practices with grief, and part personal memoir of grieving in isolation.
Brian passed away a few months before the COVID lockdowns were initially implemented. I live in an incredibly rural area. The result was that I was alone except for the dogs.
Interestingly enough, I got a ton of support in these early days of grieving. After all what else did people have to do while they were hanging out at home? This may come off as cynical or even judgmental to some people. But in the few talks I’ve had with other people who experienced loss around this time period, I’ve found that many of them had comparable encounters with support. The truth is that the COVID lockdown slowed time for the world. People started up hobbies they had put aside, and others began working on home improvement projects they had always intended to do but never had the time for. For Pete’s sake, people even started baking bread! Baking bread. It should not come as a surprise that the COVID lockdown caused the grief stopwatch to move more slowly.
I have one friend, Steve, that called me every night. We checked in every night at the same time. Other friends called me — not as frequently as Steve — but more frequently than you would expect.
Time passed, the lockdown ended, and people went back to life as usual.
Maybe it was the fact that I have been a solopreneur since 2006. Maybe it was the fact that I live in rural Vermont on 107 acres. My “usual” was isolation.
I have always been that kind of guy. You know the kind of guy who might hike the entire Appalachian Trail by himself. The kind of guy who might go for many, many 10-day silent meditation retreats and sit in a broom closet (they call them “meditation cells,” but to the uninitiated, they look like broom closets) in the dark for hours at a time.
People sometimes assume that because of my sociable demeanor, quick wit, and strong ability to talk in public that I am an extrovert. However, this is not the case at all. Perhaps it’s because I have such an immense amount of faith in who I am that I don’t require approval from others (so comfortable, in fact, that some people mistake this for arrogance). If I were to be cast away on an uninhabited island, I think I would be quite content.
Actually, that is not true.
I would be very happy stranded on a deserted island with Groot and Rocket.
(along with a freezer filled with Ben & Jerry’s and pizza).
The Changing Face of Support — Post Lockdown
Maybe it was just a coincidence that my support started shifting as the lockdowns ended. People got back to pre-pandemic busy-ness. Or perhaps it was the fact that I was becoming more adamant that I was still going through a grieving process and that the help I was getting was not enough. People have moved on, regardless of the reasons why. Support became superficial. And NO ONE asked about how my grief was doing?
Steve stood out the most since we were in constant contact with one another. He stopped paying attention to what I was saying in our conversations, as evidenced by his reacting to old information as if it was new. I pointed this out and that was that. Our interaction is now like that with a distant acquaintance. I also discovered that Steve was completely unwilling to talk about my grief (you can learn more about that in the next article in this series).
I found myself questioning my ongoing feelings of grief. Was it me? Was it them? Am I not normal? Do I have a problem? Well, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), I have a problem. The APA calls it Prolonged Grief Disorder. I call it bullshit.
To the outside world, I look extremely stuck. I am sure that most, like Steve, don’t want me talking about grief. They probably think — “Oh, here comes that grief guy again.” “I am afraid to ask him how he is doing.” I get it — I can sense the frustration, exasperation, and annoyance as I won’t back down from it.
Here is the truth — I am just like the thousands of grieving people out there. I don’t have a disorder. I am just vocal and unapologetically public about it.
It reminds me of when I first came out as a gay man. Many people were “OK” with my sexuality as long as I didn’t “flaunt it.” They were OK with who I was as long as I stayed in the closet. The truth is that they were not OK with who I was. They were just polite bigots who probably told faggot jokes when I wasn’t around. They were prisoners of their homophobia.
People like Steve want to keep us in the closet. They are grief bigots. They are prisoners of their grief-phobia.
The Changing Face of Support — Groot and Rocket
Before you think this has anything to do with Marvel superheroes, I must point out that the dogs’ names are Groot and Rocket.
Over the course of the pandemic and with friends turning out to be unable or unwilling to continue to go there (there being grief) with me, the dogs began to play an increased level of support in my life.
My ever-present, and I do mean ever-present, companions, these two have become, in addition to their bodily presence, essential psychological supports.
It was not my intention to educate them so that they could become psychological supporters. They evolved. When they would see me crying, they would engage with me. Often, they would pick up on signs and symptoms before they would even start.
They started piling on top of me at some point in the process. It was very peculiar. I have never had any dog do this before. I even started taking selfies of the pile-up. It was incredibly helpful. Quite by accident, I started to cue them to do a pile-up. It all started when they would walk up to me when I was sitting on the couch and simply look at me. I would look at them and say, “Do you want a hug?” because Groot, in particular, would throw herself on my upper torso as if she was getting a hug. Now I can just say, “I need a hug,” to prompt their behavior.
Diagnosis And Trekking Poles
At some point during the past 6 months, as the flame of support I was receiving from friends all but extinguished, I reached out for help from a professional. My intention was to boost my level of support while simultaneously striving to increase the number of people who would be willing to interact with me about my grief as well as other aspects of my life.
I remember her asking me who gave me support. Without even thinking I said, “Groot and Rocket.” Not in the least did friends nor family come to mind. After explaining the dogs, she broached the subject of psychiatric support.
It seems my ongoing grief and associated feelings qualify as a disability.
What the fuck?!?!?!?!?
And it seems the behaviors that the dogs have evolved to are the type of things that psychiatric service dogs do for people with psychiatric disabilities. This is different than emotional support dogs which help people feel better solely by virtue of their presence.
Double what the fuck?!?!?!?!?
What do I do? Do I embrace the diagnosis, which I know is complete bullshit, and engage what, for many, is a sham cottage industry filled with fake service dog vests and other paraphernalia? Am I a scammer?
There is a truth besides all this stuff that a clinical social worker has presented me with. Beyond the fact that these dogs do provide a great level of assistance when it comes to matters of depression and grief, there is another reality. To tell you the truth, it is challenging for me to participate in activities that take me away from their presence. The truth is that I need them by my side.
I wish there was a decision-making service dog.
These articles, as well as my book, “Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief,” expose the truth about grief. I am blunt. I don’t sugar-coat what I have discovered about grief and how we deal (and don’t deal) with it. Grief is too important of a topic for me to beat around the bush.
I want you to know that until Brian died and I directly experienced powerful personal grief and loss on a level that completely rocked my world, I had my head up my ass just like some of you reading this article probably do. And I was a therapist. I hurt a lot of people because I didn’t have enough self-awareness and I didn’t have enough empathy. I thoughtlessly bought into the lie that we are told about grieving.
When I wrote the book “Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief,” I thought that my understanding was complete. I was wrong. That is why I continue to share my insights in these articles. Thank you for reading this, and I invite you to learn more about what grief truly is. You can read other posts right here on Medium, and you can get my book in digital, audio, and print versions.
