To think grief is sometimes self-centred, more about identity than loss?

@sunkissedandwarm Your post truly says it all and is so beautifully written.

Queen Victoria springs to mind. Performatively mourning for decades even while shagging her equery or whoever he was.

I'm a widow and joined a group called WAY UP which helped me through the first few years.

I like the saying that grief is love with nowhere to go. It's not just missing the person, it is also what they are missing. My husband is missing the arrival of our first grandson, I do feel very sad about it.

I was with my husband for 38 years and when he died my whole future changed, I was 59. I thought I'd be OK financially as I was expecting my pension at 60 - I'd not received the letter telling me it would be 66. I'm 68 now and had to sell our family house and spend all of our savings during the six year wait. I've not managed to save much since as the cost of living has increased so much.

I do see where you're coming from tbh.

It's like women who keep getting pregnant because they miss having people fuss over them and can't handle it when they no longer have a cute newborn. A friend of mine even admitted to me that's how come she's got 7 kids! As soon as she was running out of time to have more babies, she started getting cute puppies!

No, and I think you're very judgemental about how people grieve. People who judge you not to grieve in the 'right way' are awful and have probably never (yet) experienced real loss.

I lost a child a good few years ago now and it is totally part of who I am today. It does change and shape identity. I am most definitely not performative about it. If I never had to tell anyone, I'd never tell anyone because it's personal and it's painful to share. I'd rather hide away and keep it to myself.

But it's hard to keep it to yourself because people ask prying questions about your children and what they do. If people would stop asking those questions, it would be much easier to keep it to yourself because you're not forced to disclose it. Disclosing it also comes with the risk that the person finds your loss to hard too know about and decides not to be a friend or social contact anymore, because they are unable to put their own discomfort aside in the face of your loss. (No loss to me, those kind of people really, but it does affect how easy it is to form social connections because you don't know if the person is safe or will run).

In honesty, I want to hide and it takes a real effort to be social and meet new people. I don't want to tell you about my loss and I definitely don't wear it on my sleeve. If you don't accept my dismissive explanation of what my children are doing and push me to the point I can't avoid telling you, if it's the wrong day, I might burst into tears when I tell you. That's on you, not me. And who cares? It's not performative, I can't help it in that moment. If that makes you uncomfortable and makes you end our friendship, then you are the selfish one who is self-centered. At least I can sit with people's pain and tears, even before I had my own loss, because I can centre their feelings, not mine.

It's impossible for some losses not to shape who you are as they are so profound.

We had the same thing with my dad and the big blocks of Dairy Milks at Christmas. Last year I walked around Tesco in tears because I accidentally bumped into them and it hurt so bloody much.

When I say cried I mean I walked around getting my shopping and kept wiping involuntary tears away, rather than sat in the aisle and howled the although that was tempting . I certainly wasn't trying to be performative or whatever other bollocks the OP might label it as.

I think getting upset is very different to public wailing though,

I'm sorry about your uncle. My first baby died 2 hours after he was born, I've since had 2 other children and although their aware of him, they have never got emotional about him ( afaik ) and I assume that's because I've never got emotional about him infront of them

@Monmkeymamkymonky It's very easy to look at that family, I'm sure, and say "Oooh how weird and dysfunctional" but actually it's just very, very sad and they (the adult who was bereaved of their brother) are dealing with it in their own way. It's not great if it affects the children negatively but it won't be the parents' intention. I have an uncle who I never met, he was murdered and his body was never found. I feel very sad when I think about him because of the awful circumstances and because of how it affects my parent.

I've cried over a Dove gift set. My mum always had several sets for Christmas and it was a running joke. I miss her.

It could be that what you describe is actually part of the grief.

I’ve always thought I’m a bit emotionally broken tbh - even now, I don’t cry easily…..but when I do? It’s usually something that seems really minor to other people, but for me there’s a deep rooted reason - crystallised ginger at Christmas for example 🤷🏻‍♀️ My DH bought me some last year and I burst into tears because it reminds me of the special Christmas shopping trips with my person, munching crystallised ginger in the bus on the way home.
Feels really stupid on the surface - crying over ginger! But it’s not.

To the people on this thread who have lost children and other loved ones, I’m so so sorry. There aren’t words.

I know a family whose uncle died well before any children were born. So they never met. Ever. He died around 20 years ago.

Yet they all tall about him like he died last week, their are neices who have never met this man yet sob uncontrollably when their mum brings him up ( frequently ) and she sobs uncontrollably too. Their front garden is full of memorial things about him

It's beyond grieving him at this point and just about performing and getting attention

OP it's not for you to decide what is deep or tragic. That's the point.

That made me tear up because I know exactly what you mean. You get to a point where you're "fine", but little, random things will still catch you out. And sometimes, you're really surprised what you're ok with, and what makes you cry.

I used to inwardly roll my eyes every time someone cried at something I didn't think was particularly sad - like a children's movie. These days, my emotions sit so much closer to surface.

I think having spent so much time crying, my body has created some kind of defence system where if anything upsets me now, I'm so much quicker to cry. You cry out stress hormones, so crying - rather than being all British stiff upper lip - is actually good for you.

And now, by the end of writing this message, that initial sharp pain of shared grief has lessened. I really did judge people for crying at the drop of a hat when I was younger. These days, I think they're really smart and have learnt the best way to process their emotions so they can function and keep going.

PS I've never deleted the phone number either. I don't think I'll ever bring myself to do so.

That's a pretty deep analysis for someone you notice online.
I call BS, just another goady post.

I lost my son 12 months ago. You wouldn't know if you met me.
I mask well. But you know, my life now is all about keeping ME sane and positive. I hope you are never in this position.

If facebook was a pub.....

Yes, grief can make you self-centred.

But you know what, if you suffer a real bereavement - if you lose someone who really matters to you - if you go through that and act like your best self, you're some kind of saint or robot.

You never get over real loss. You have to find a way to live around it, and in doing so, you become a different person.

If you're lucky, your friends still love you regardless. They acknowledge that you're a nicer, more compassionate person normally, but your cup for dealing with life's crap is overflowing and you're in survival mode.

If you're unlucky, they don't understand and they post threads on MN about you.

Backpeddling like mad aren't we OP

I do get what you are saying or trying to say but i also know it varies so much from person to person. There are people that cannot “move on” because their grief is so intense whereas for others it’s just different

I think people are misunderstanding what you mean, but I think I know. I think social media has a lot to answer for (as usual). I follow a couple of accounts which started as interiors/mum blogging and due to sad events are now ‘grief pages’. One mum very tragically had a stillborn baby a few years ago, and she still posts about her loss and grief every day. She’s had another baby since, and while I completely respect her right to grieve as she sees fit, I wonder about the effect it has on her children and her own MH. Every birthday, Christmas, or anniversary, she has them write letters to their late sibling, or draw pictures, or release balloons. She talks to them a lot about their sibling and films it for the account. Every time they have a group photo one of them has to hold a photo of their late sibling to include her. She recently said one of her children seems to be depressed and cries a lot about it, and although it feels awful to admit, I did wonder if being trapped in this endless cycle of remembrance and grief is good for them - a few years is a long time for a 7 year old, and I wonder if their grief would’ve healed better with time and without quite so many reminders.

I also think she herself may feel like now she’s started the account and has so many followers, she can’t really slow it down.

Grief changes the very fibre of who you are as a person - especially when the loss is a person who’s had a very present role in your life.
When I lost my person, I simply couldn’t comprehend a world without her in it - because it’s something I’d never known. She was there from the very moment I was born, and I don’t think I ever went longer than a couple of days without speaking to her. For months afterwards, I’d instinctively pick up my phone, scroll to her name in my contacts and then remember she wasn’t going to be on the other end of the phone.
Even now, 3 years later, her loss still feels really fresh sometimes - certain things mentioned in conversation, or going to certain places etc bring up all those feelings of grief all over again. So yes: I guess that grief has become a part of my personality in a sense, but not in the performative way your initial post tried to perpetuate.

There's another one running at the moment about 'do people only do the right thing when someone is watching.'

There really needs to be a name for these types of provocative, easy to identify the pattern, bullshit OPs with their word soups, feinting in subsequent posts and then disappearing like snow.

This thread is particularly cruel, unpleasant and hurtful to anyone grieving.

My heartfelt sympathies to anyone on this thread who has suffered the agony of loss.