- "How can I stop grieving?"
And the thing is, darling, you can't stop grieving.
When you feel the feelings, they go away much faster
than when you deny them, suppress them,
and pretend they're not there.
- I want to ask you how to stop grieving.
I lost my mom
a little bit more than three months ago,
but it's still feels like yesterday.
It still feels new.
When do, normally, people recover from grief?
Thank you.
- Oh, that's so sad, you said, "How can I stop grieving?"
And the thing is, darling, you can't stop grieving.
You love your mom, you only lost her three months ago.
There are five stages of grief.
And the first stage is called denial.
"I keep expecting them to come through the door,
"I keep expecting the phone to ring,
"I can't believe I'm never going to see my mom again."
And denial is very normal.
It took me a long time to delete my mother's number
from my phone, and my father's too,
and one of my dear friends that died,
I just somehow couldn't do that
because I was in this stage called denial.
But denial ends.
And then, you have a second part of grief,
stage two, which is often anger,
feeling so angry that your mother has gone,
angry that she was taken from you.
And these stages have to be gone through.
And then, after anger, becomes incredible sadness.
Sometimes it's the other way around.
Stage one is denial, stage two can be sadness,
crying, weeping, feeling bereft because you are bereaved,
and stage three can be anger,
and it doesn't matter which stage you are,
so you have to go through the denial.
"I'm keeping all their stuff,
"I haven't cleared anything away."
It can take a year before
you start to let go of people's things.
So, denial comes first and then sadness or anger.
Sadness, feeling so sad and weeping and then anger,
or anger first and then sadness.
And then comes stage four, which is acceptance.
"I've suddenly realized, I've accepted my mother is gone."
And the final stage is moving on.
And the thing is, you can't race through those stages,
you have to accept, if you're feeling sad or angry,
you think, "Oh, I'm already past stage one
"so I'm getting there."
And I want you to say something, which is,
"I miss my mom, but I don't need her."
Because, often, we get in this, "I need my mom,
"I need my mom, I need my mom."
You're a grown up woman, you don't need her,
but you do miss her.
I still miss my mom who died in 2016.
And, in the beginning, I would hear all these songs
that would make me think of her.
And I missed her so much, but it gets better.
It's not the same, because for a daughter,
your mother is so important,
and you can talk to her at anytime you want to.
And I can talk to my mother all the time
and look for little signs.
And I have her picture in my bedroom
and her initial, and I still have that.
But, I promise you, it does get better.
Someone said to me, "Grief is like the waves in an ocean.
"They hit you and you go under and then you come up
"and then you go under again.
"But, eventually, you think, 'Oh, I'm coming up for longer
"'than I'm going under.'"
So, your mother loved you, and you loved her.
And rather than waiting for it to go away,
look at the stages and go,
"Okay, I'm still in denial, but this will pass.
"I'm going to go into sadness next, and that will pass.
"And then I'm going to feel angry, and that will pass.
"And then I'll be in the acceptance,
"then I'll be able to move on."
You see, one of my favorite sayings is,
"We have to feel our feelings
"until they no longer require to be felt."
When you think, "I'm not going to be sad,
"I'm going to push that feeling down and pretend I'm okay,"
the feelings regroup and come back.
When you go, "You know what?
"I'm mourning my mom, I miss my mom.
"I can cry for my mom, I can feel sad for my mom,
"I can feel angry that I don't have her."
When you feel the feelings,
they go away much faster than when you deny them,
suppress them, and pretend they're not there.
So you have to go through this process.
I'm so sorry you lost your mom so early.
There's never a good time to lose your mom.
But all the love you had for each other is still in you.
All the special times are still in you.
And you'll always have that,
and, I promise you, it gets better,
it gets easier, it will pass.
But you can't hurry grief,
you know that song, 'You Can't Hurry Love'?
Well, you actually can't hurry grief.
It's a process.
When you go to other communities, you see people who wear black
and they mourn, and people come around
and comfort them and they go through a time.
And the significance of an event is very linked to
how effectively it was mourned.
You are in mourning for your mother, your beloved mother,
and you can't hurry that, you can't deny it,
you can't pretend it's not going on.
But you can accept it, go with it,
and it will make it so much easier.
I wish you success and joy and love.
And please let me know how you get on.
I'm sending you so much love.