It’s quite common to see the terms bereavement, mourning, and grief used interchangeably. However, even though they are all aspects of ‘grief,’ each describes a different part of the grieving process.
Bereavement refers to the factual state of having someone important to you. It often involves grieving the absence of a loved one and mourning the loss.
Mourning refers to how you express grief outwardly and is a deeply personal experience that can often be influenced by cultural beliefs, practices, and rituals, as well as one’s own beliefs. Some expressions of mourning can include meaningful ceremonies such as funerals, memorials, ‘celebration-of-life events’, a ‘wake’, rituals and customs, creating a memorial for the deceased, or seeking support from family members, friends, or a grief counsellor. Sometimes, it involves simple gestures such as wearing black or observing a moment of silence. Some grievers mourn a loved one by sharing stories about them, planting their favourite flower in their garden, spreading their ashes in a favourite spot, running a race in their honour, or placing a nameplate on a bench in their favourite park.
Grief refers to your ‘personal and internal’ responses to the loss of an important person and or pet. While many people see grief as only having to do with sadness, it is, in fact, a profound ‘whole person’ lifetime experience that impacts our emotions, our thoughts, our bodies, and our religious/ spiritual belief system.
Here are some ways your grief can show up: sadness/yearning, sorrow, feeling nothing or numb, anger, guilt, shame, loneliness, fear, stress, and despair. Grievers can also experience tiredness/ fatigue, ‘brain fog’ [confusion and/ or difficulty concentrating], recurring thoughts, forgetfulness, short-temperedness, irritability, sleep and eating problems, loss of interest in hobbies and social activities, physical aches, pains, headaches, and even an increase in colds and flu.
