By Jill FitzGerald

Grieving the Difficult Relationship

By Jill FitzGerald

Most grief books help you mourn the loss of a loved one, how to cope with yearning, how to adapt to the emptiness following the death of someone so significant in your life that the mere thought of living without them feels incredibly overwhelming and incapacitating. But, where are the resources for those who had a conflicted relationship?

Where is the book on “Things I Really Wanted to Say, But Couldn’t, During the Eulogy”? There are very few, if any.

Not every relationship is that smooth or free of conflict. Many people have mixed feelings about the person that they lost. Many children have been repeatedly disappointed by their parents or caregivers in more ways than they can count.

It is human to feel ambivalent. The people that we lose often had very human problems – addictions, incarceration, gambling, infidelity. These problems are real and are prevalent, yet the unwritten rule of grief is “You don’t speak ill of the dead.”

However, if you can’t speak about it, where does it go? The body remembers everything.