If you haven鈥檛 experienced a significant loss in your life, then you are one of the lucky ones. If you have 鈥� be it a spouse, child or close friend 鈥� then you probably already know how it can feel like losing your mind. Which, in some ways, you are.
In her extensive grief research, explains that when we experience a profound loss, our brains have to begin a lengthy process of rewiring all of the pathways and predictions they made based on a loved one鈥檚 presence, gradually switching over to an understanding of their absence. It can take years for our bodies to make sense of loss as we navigate continual yearning while adapting to a new way of life.
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And it isn鈥檛 just our brain chemistry turned upside down, but our whole bodies too. Research shows that grief our heart rate and blood pressure, makes us more prone to heart attacks and raises the risk for cardiovascular disease, infections, inflammation, cancer and chronic diseases like diabetes. is protective against all sorts of external stresses in everyday life, but when they are gone, we are more likely to feel exposed to what life throws at us, causing a of stress hormones that affect our cardiovascular and immune systems.
This should encourage us to give our grieving the space and support it deserves, rather than shutting it away and avoiding it. A by the UK Commission on Bereavement highlighted that we need to do a lot better in how we support grief at home, in schools and in the workplace. Too often, we don鈥檛 know how to talk about grief, how to support the bodies of those grieving or how to show compassion for ourselves and each other. In many ways, we are still wed to the idea that grief progresses in stages towards an endpoint, as psychiatrist famously formulated. However, the idea that we might pass through steps in a linear fashion only exerts undue pressure to 鈥渕ove on鈥�.
In reality, grief moves in cycles and is never 鈥渄one鈥�, which is why, as an outdoor psychotherapist, I am passionate about getting people outside to tend to their grief in a non-judgemental environment where the circularity of life and death, joy and sadness, is the norm.
In the shifting landscape of grief, what we need is solid ground on which to learn how to function anew without intrusion from the demands of our busy, indoor lives. Time outside , allowing the griever to anchor themselves in the soothing senses of nature. It offers solitude and space for contemplation, a soundscape that is ambient and restorative, something beautiful to focus on other than our loss. Getting outside often dials down the feelings of rumination and despair that grief ramps up, even if just for a short while.
There isn鈥檛 yet on support for grieving people specifically, but there is an on the of connecting with nature that can usefully counter many of the impacts of grief. Time outside lowers our blood pressure and the production of stress hormones, reduces inflammation and decreases the risk of heart disease. So it is an intuitive pairing to take our grieving bodies outside.
Grief isn鈥檛 pathological and doesn鈥檛 often require medication, but it is something we all need support for in the long term and can learn to be a better companion for others in. Bereavement is so ubiquitous that it is vital we learn how to tend to it using the resources we have around us. It is crucial that our green sanctuary spaces and green social projects are invested in, for their own sake, but also for this most human experience that we will all face, one way or another.
Ruth Allen is the author of聽Weathering: How the Earth鈥檚 deep wisdom can help us endure life鈥檚 storms
