What “Aha” Moments Can Do To Heal Grieving Hearts

What changes the course of our grief? What puts us on the path of healing? What quiets the raging questions, self-accusatory thoughts and pit-sinking sorrow?

May I suggest an “aha” moment – an epiphany. A sudden, transformative thought or realization that changes perspective and gives us release or relief – a piece of healing.

I call these events “revelations.” I journaled more than a half dozen of them related to the loss of my father and mother. Jane Williams, a clinical psychologist, calls them “aha!” moments.

Dr. Williams developed the Medical Crisis and Loss Clinic at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, a couple of hours drive from my hometown, Memphis. She also is the author of Mysterious Moments: Thoughts that Transform Grief,” published in 2017. I read it earlier this year. I think so much of the book and its premise that I’ve put it in my “Recommended” page on my blog.

Her book is a collection of 10 stories of “aha” moments. The stories include a mother who, as she watched the news, realized the infant son she’d saw die never had to endure a lonely death on a battlefield. A daughter, raised by a rigid, critical mother, who expressed her feelings at her bedridden parent’s bedside. A sister, a chaplain, a therapist. They all experienced a revelatory thought that changed the way they thought about the death and their grief.

What struck me first is that I’d never read anything that examined “aha” moments as an important part of the grief process. And no wonder. Dr. Williams writes that these moments are by no means universal. Not everyone experiences them.

“They are more often associated with deaths that have caused the bereaved ongoing distress,” Dr. Williams writes. “These thoughts are often breakthroughs that offer relief and healing.”

One of my first revelations or “aha” moments came two years after my mother died. I had been beating myself up over not being by her side at her death. I wanted to comfort her. To squeeze every moment out of our time together. To say a last goodbye. But I was not with her. I’d left her side an hour or so earlier. And I hated, hated, hated that.

I rummaged around her home, regretting everything that kept me from being by her side.

On the second anniversary of her death, as I drove home from the project to clean out the house, a crystal clear fact seemed to be downloaded into my brain.

“Mom didn’t know either.”

If she didn’t know, if hospice didn’t know, how could I have known she would die that night? If I had known, I would have stayed with her. Of course I would have stayed. I did not know.

With that, I allowed myself to be human. With that, I forgave myself for not being all-knowing. The grip on the idea that I wasn’t a good daughter loosened.

Unfortunately, it appears we cannot produce these moments, these revelations. As Dr. Williams writes, the thoughts tend to come “out of nowhere.”

However, I believe that we can possibly prepare the way for them. As a farm prepares soil for seed and harvest, we can prepare our minds and souls for revelations.

How? I’ll speak from my experience. I hope what I did intuitively will foster revelations within your grief journey and act as medicine to your hurting heart.

• Be open to revelation. I believed I’d learn something. I believed something existed that would act as a medicine. I acknowledged I probably didn’t recognize all the facts, possibly because grief / regret / stress my perspective.

• Ask for revelation. The all-knowing God is the source of all wisdom. He knows what we cannot see – and what we aren’t ready to see or ready to receive. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” God knows how and when to provide.

  

• Search for revelation. Because I believed something outside my viewpoint existed, I searched for it. I turned the facts over in my mind. I read. I questioned. I analyzed.

• Create space for revelation. I unraveled the minutiae of my sorrow. I gave memories, triggers, and anniversaries whatever room they required. I didn’t press mourning out of my life. I embraced it. By giving grief space, I created the possibility for revelation.

• Allow time for revelation. I kept being open, asking, searching, and creating space for revelation – over several years. I even got an “aha” moment eight years after Mom died.

While everyone’s grief journey is different and healing may come in various forms, “aha” moments are at least one of the super medicines available to some of us, some of the time.

Do you have an “aha” experience, a revelation that has been healing to you? Please share it.  

 

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