A Grieving Atheist Book Review: The Grief Recovery Handbook.

I've recently finished reading The Grief Recovery Handbook by John James and Russell Friedman. This book is outlines a method for coming to grips with all types of loss in your life, from horrendous death to moving. The title is a little misleading because, as the authors recognize,  we don't always get over major losses but can live with them in a way that they call "completing our emotions." They discuss how we are poorly socialized to deal with loss because most of our culture is concerned with gains. I agree with them that modern therapeutic methods and language are often not very helpful. Every loss and every grief is unique to the individual and can not be reduced to stages or timelines.

As I was reading through the book and finally arrived at the steps to the implementation of the grief recovery method, I felt a sense of familiarity. This book was originally written before Marie Kondo put out her best seller on the Joys of Tidying Up, but it promotes metaphorically similar actions. I realized that this practice of "emotional completeness" was the explanation I had missed when I read Miss Kondo's book.

In a nutshell,  the authors of the grief recovery handbook suggest a method for reviewing your relationship to an idea, a person, a place, or a thing. It is recommended to find a partner to share the exercises with in six sessions. They want you to examine the good and the bad related to the whatever or whomever was lost, then write your thoughts down in an orderly fashion. For the loss of a person, you reminisce, you apologize if needed, you forgive if needed, you make any emotional statements that you might need to get off your chest, and you write a final good bye. This letter is to be read aloud, even if you do not have a partner in the process. It is recommended that the letter be burned afterward.

Basically, the idea is to practice letting things go in a way that gets all the thoughts and feelings off your chest, hopefully once and for all. The reason I said this reminded me of Marie Kondo is she advocates a telling each of your possessions good bye when you decide to get rid of them. You remind yourself how you got it, what joy or sorrow it brought you, and then release it to move on from your life. People tend to make fun of her thinking of things as conscious beings, but I am seeing another side of this. We do develop all kinds of relationships, attachments if you will. There is no condemnation in that. But when we need to let go, or are ready to let go, we need examples of how to do that. This book provides them.

Do I think it is perfect? No. Grief will still remain.. Sorrow still happens, but unresolved emotions have been addressed and dealt with. This can only be helpful, in my opinion. There are two things of note. First, you must be ready and willing to say goodbye, at which point I have not arrived yet. Second, though the authors stress doing the method their way, I think it's perfectly fine to adapt it in a way that works for you.

There is very little talk of faith, even though the authors let you know they are believers. They make a point out of taking faith out of the recovery process. Their method is completely accessible to those without supernatural beliefs.