AMA with Juliet Rosenfeld about her book on grief and bereavement - 12 noon on 10th March

[JuliaMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce an AMA with Juliet Rosenfeld on Thursday 10th March at 12 noon for one hour.

Juliet is a psychotherapist who has a particular interest in bereavement and partner loss. What is the specific grief of being widowed or the death of a spouse or partner? Why is it so difficult to live with this loss? Why do people around the grieving partner find it so hard to help them? Why does it take so much longer than people think or hope it will to adapt to this new life alone?

Why do we find it so difficult to talk about death and why do those in grief often feel so stigmatised by their sadness? How can we help the grieving? Do you ever 'get over' the death of someone that you love? What does a fear of death do to us, and with mortality so present due to the Pandemic and the present uncertain circumstances, how can we manage our anxiety about death in order to comfort those in grief and live the lives we have in the fullest way?

You may remember Juliet from two webchats in 2020 - one about grief and bereavement, after the launch of her first book, The State Of Disbelief, and one about coping with lockdown with Dr Carine Minne. She is especially interested in partner loss and how we might better understand its pervasive pain and the lengthy suffering it causes.

Now Juliet’s book, The State of Disbelief, is out in paperback with a new chapter about deaths from covid. The book has been described by The Times as “a beautifully written, profoundly moving and immersive account of grief that will bring solace to readers who have been bereaved, and guide anyone who knows them, who feels at a loss how to understand what they’re going through”.

Juliet will be able to respond to questions about all aspects of bereavement, including dealing with impending bereavement, as well as discuss her thoughts on loss, grief and mourning which she develops in her book.

Please note that Juliet works with adults only. Any posts made by Juliet on this thread will be her own opinions and not representative of any of the organisations she belongs to. She will not be able to make diagnoses online on the thread, but will be able to provide general answers/comments in response to users' posts.

Please join us here on Thursday at 12 noon to post a question, or if you can’t join us then, please post your question in advance.

As always, please remember our guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil. Also if one topic is dominating a thread, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. (We may suspend the accounts of anyone who continues after we've posted to ask people to stop, so please take note.) Rest assured we will ALWAYS let the guest know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Many thanks,
MNHQ

@Elderflower14

In the last twenty seven years Ive lost my premature son and my husband.. Seven years ago I thought I had got my happy ending with my new partner... One month in he was diagnosed with cancer and I lost him two and a half years later.... I often wonder what I've done wrong to lose so many loved ones... 💔

What terrible, multiple losses. I am so deeply sorry to hear this. It is so unjust, so horrible and must also make you feel so isolated at times, as who can possibly know what it feels like but you? You lost your new love too. I am so so sorry. I can of course reassure you have done nothing wrong. You've loved a lot, and the downside, the awful downside of loving deeply is that it is so excruciating when that love is taken away by a death. It is absolutely the worst of losses and you've lost both your son and two partners. Please know you've shared these feelings with us all reading here and we have heard how hard it must be. Have you tried talking to a counsellor or therapist - it might be really helpful if you feel it would be possible to make that first contact? As I've said before, time is immaterial here, 7 years is nothing for the enormous investment of love you had, and your bravery in finding it again and loving again and then having it taken away again. Please do look at the links if it has been on your mind to find someone to share some of these feelings with. Sharing is undervalued I think as a way of making sense of how bad we can feel when something terrible like a death happens. Just getting someone else to know how you feel can be a point of feeling heard and held. My best wishes to you

@MrsIglesias

Hello Juliet. I haven't lost anyone recently but enjoyed your lockdown webchat and heartfelt yet expert responses. I think you said somewhere that you don't believe in the 'stages of grief' - do you think there are patterns and/or why do you think this kind of idea is popular and comforting to people? Do you think it's helpful or unhelpful and why?

Thank you. Let me just try and answer a few questions here?

I think (increasingly) that grief is highly, highly, individual and can't be ascribed stages, or possibly even patterns. Not really. Not to my mind, but this is only my belief, just to be clear. I don't want to speak of everyone else because how can I possibly know.

Likewise people are described or describe themselves as 'grief experts'
but to me the only real expert is the grief stricken person themself. This is what I think and when they come and see someone like me, a therapist, what they want is for me to hear what is their experience and try and make sense in the hope that they might not be in such awful psychological pain. But only I know what I feel and only you know what you feel. That's true of life as it is of grief isn't it? But I can listen, and I can try my best to share and hear what is going on as someone working in this field. But ultimately grief takes it course through us in a multiplicity of ways which are impossible to predict or control. So is that a pattern or stage?

What I don't think is helpful is advice that suggests grief can be helped 'away' - I think grief stays for as long as it does for reasons we cannot quite understand but are to do with the individual and the relationship with the person who has died. Intense. Private. Powerful. Unconscious! We don't always know exactly why we love someone, do we? We just absolutely love them! What is harder to understand is how these feeling are as complex in death as in life. We can't talk in the same way to the beloved dead person as we can to the alive one, and ask them what we are feeling. So when someone dies the relationship can vividly continue for the person left alive because the deep investment of love was so profound.

But to really answer your questions - are they comforting and helpful to people these ideas of stages of grief, possibly yes, and possibly more so to those trying to help the bereaved person.

Grief is so unpredictable and hard to be with for us all, especially after many years. I see someone has posted here about a death that happened twenty years ago. Can they be helped? Yes certainly and it does not surprise me when people seek help sometimes decades after a loved person died.

But seeing stages of grief has not been my experience or anything I've seen clinically, no. It's much more complex than that, as we all human beings are. But I think we have to say that whatever is helpful should be acknowledged.

@problembottom

Hi Juliet. I sadly experienced the sudden loss of a sibling two years ago, it was a violent death.

I feel I've been coping well since the initial months of deep shock and then grief but I wonder if that's because I don't think about it most of the time. I'm not ready to look through pictures of them or anything like that and I don't talk about what happened much either.

I'm kind of trusting the pain will come out very slowly over time when I'm ready. Is this normal or should I be taking more active steps to deal with what happened? Some of my friends worry I'll "crash" at some point because I'm coping too well.

Thanks.

Firstly I am so sorry to hear this. I really am. As I've already said, grief takes it time and there is no wrong or right. Look at pictures only when you want to. Do you want to talk? Maybe not yet, so don't. You are processing and I like what you say about trusting the pain will come out very slowly when you're ready. I think this sounds very thoughtful and as if you know yourself well. Not everyone wants or need more help. Friends and people around the grieving person are of course concerned and that's lovely to hear but maybe you can reassure them that for now, this is your way and you're ok. If you do feel worried about crashing, then that is the moment to say you need help. Even then it might be that you just need someone one of your friends to really listen to you and maybe you can prepare a trusted friend with that possibility? I wish you all the best Juliet

@Szyz2020

I lost my DH many years ago. We were very happy and in love. But some years after his death I met someone new who I love and who loves me in a way that has made me re-evaluate my relationship with my late DH. He was not a bad man but with hindsight I can see so many ways in which I was not myself with him, as I am now with my new DH; he was a dominant force in our relationship and now I am truly an equal. I feel bad and guilty for making this comparison. I feel like I have an alternative narrative in my head when my late DH’s friends and family talk about how great he was. He was lovely in many ways but I’m not sure our relationship would have gone the distance if I’d woken up a bit to my status in our relationship and how he could have treated me better (not violence or control, nothing like that serious. Just my personality being subsumed by his and my wants and needs coming second to his).

I carry this with me and don’t feel I can ever admit my feelings to my friends or family and certainly not to my dc from my first marriage who were too young to remember their dad but get a picture painted for them that I don’t recognise.

Hello, I think you've really identified a lot here about how you feel, this is good to see and read. Maybe this is a situation though where you're writing because you need to get some help vocalising to someone these complex feelings and reactions, which have possibly come out of such a loving relationship where you have felt very heard! But the narrative about your husband that troubles you possibly does need to be aired and maybe talking to a therapist might be the right thing to do now? Not least to ensure your children keep theirs, I have no idea but they may not need to do the processing that you have - he was their father not husband and it is of course very different for them grieving his loss or holding his memory in their minds. I hope this is helpful and thank you for writing.

Hello everyone, I just want to add something about supporting people who are bereaved and offering the best help you can to friends or family.
My first suggestion is LISTEN. And just keep listening, even when someone is quiet and doesn't want to speak. Be with them and listen and be prepared that sometimes it will be years and years later that they want to speak or tell you something that is on their mind about the dead person.
Secondly, include the bereaved person in what you can, even if they don't want to join whatever it is. Keep making them feel they are still in their old pre death world even if they feel locked off and isolated in the prison of grief ( this was how I felt a lot of the time when I was widowed. I looked normal, I sounded normal, I went to work but inside I was utterly alone and scared.)
Especially with spousal loss there is a feeling I think of shame often of feeling not in a couple anymore when in your mind you still are, so please RESPECT THE COUPLE that someone was in and don't make them feel like a single person, they are not. They are a widow or someone who has a partner who has died.
But most generally, don't let anyone feel shame for wanting to tell you how deeply and passionately they loved and let them reminisce about their person in any way they want. He loved this, she loved that, we used to, etc and let them use the present tense, which they will often even without realising. Let them continue to love and feel that they were loved. Don't push people on, tell them things will change it will get better, because really it doesn't help often in my experience. Sorry to say this but this is part of what grief does, it takes away your hope for quite a while that things will ever change. This is its terrible power but it is also as I have said about the depth of love which takes a long time to grow and can not be let go of and should not be. Let them take their time to mourn and keep them in the world with you, included and supported. Sorry this is typed fast as I have to go back to work but I have loved responding. Wishing you all the very best, Juliet

Thanks everyone for your questions and to Juliet for all the thoughtful answers - we're closing this chat now and will follow up with some links to further resources in a bit.

Hi everyone - some links here to organisations and resources that Juliet has shared:

Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide uksobs.org/
UKCP www.psychotherapy.org.uk/
BACP www.bacp.co.uk/
Winston's Wish www.winstonswish.org/
Children's Bereavement Centre childbereavement.org/
Widowed and Young www.widowedandyoung.org.uk/

We've also got three copies of Juliet's book to give away. Post if you'd like one and we'll get in touch.

Thank you for your response to me- and obviously your responses to others have helpful insights.

@RhiannonEMumsnet

Hi everyone - some links here to organisations and resources that Juliet has shared:

Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide uksobs.org/
UKCP www.psychotherapy.org.uk/
BACP www.bacp.co.uk/
Winston's Wish www.winstonswish.org/
Children's Bereavement Centre childbereavement.org/
Widowed and Young www.widowedandyoung.org.uk/

We've also got three copies of Juliet's book to give away. Post if you'd like one and we'll get in touch.

Oh I’d love to read Juliet’s book, if you have enough

Yes please. X

Thank you Juliet for your insightful and compassionate thread. I particularly identify with the need to treat a widow as still being part of a couple. Ham-fisted attempts to set someone up with a date or make jokes about going out on the pull are so disrespectful if that person hasn’t said they are ready to do so. You wouldn’t say it to someone who’s married so please don’t say it to someone who’s lost their spouse and is still in the midst of grief - they probably still feel married.

I would love a copy of Juliets book please...

If you have a spare copy, I would be grateful. I’m only 4 weeks in, after the sudden death of my darling husband. It’s still unbelievable.

So sorry for your loss @Wotagain - we'll send a copy over asap if you can DM me. From the rest of you we've randomly selected @tunnocksreturns2019 and @PeaceWithaSpoon (apologies to Elderflower14!) - if you can both also DM me your address we'll send these over to you soon.

@JuliaMumsnet

So sorry for your loss *@Wotagain - we'll send a copy over asap if you can DM me. From the rest of you we've randomly selected @tunnocksreturns2019 and @PeaceWithaSpoon* (apologies to Elderflower14!) - if you can both also DM me your address we'll send these over to you soon.

@JuliaMumsnet Received today thanks. X

@JuliaMumsnet
Thank you, my copy arrived yesterday.