The Grief Train

Despite having spent the past four years in the perinatal loss space, I had never read Bearing the Unbearable by Dr Joanne Cacciatore.  I knew of ‘Dr Jo’ and her work, but had somehow never read her books.  

Dr Jo suffered the stillbirth of her daughter, and clearly ‘gets’ traumatic grief. Importantly, Dr Jo conveys the complexities of grief in an engaging and informative way.  If you have suffered grief, support someone who is grieving or just wish to learn more about traumatic grief, I strongly encourage you to read this book.

I found the book so beautiful and engrossing that I finished it in one sitting, while on the plane somewhere between Pittsburgh and Vancouver.

Dr Jo uses the analogy of a long train trip she took to discuss journeys of love and grief. This resonates so strongly with me, given my experience of traumatic grief and the long trip I am currently undertaking.

“Looking out the window by my seat, I saw abandoned playgrounds and decrepit barns juxtaposed with freshly painted schools and flourishing farms.  I saw dried up riverbeds and lush riparian bluffs.  I saw dying ponds and verdant streams.  At times, the ride was turbulent and jarring, and at other times it was placid and smooth.

The train, like grief, had its own rhythm and varying speeds and changing conditions…

There were places on the track where a simple switch could alter our direction; these reminded me of the way in grief we can move toward denial or toward love, toward mourning or disavowal.  In tunnels, there were times when it was so dark it  was impossible to see any light at all; grief has such times too.  My eyes needed time to adjust, but after they had, in those dark places I found I could discern what was there.  Sometimes my cell phone had service and sometimes it didn’t;  sometimes I’d had connection to the outside world and other times I’d been utterly disconnected – just as with grieving…”

To this, I would add that there is also a choice while on the train ride of grief – a choice to hop off the train at a station along the way, or to ride to the end of the trip.  If you hop off, you might find yourself alone, stranded and with no way backwards or forwards.  The grief train is still running, but you’re not a part of it and you’re no longer heading where you were supposed to go.

To get to where you need to go, you need to stay on the train.  At the end of the grief train ride, you get to ride the train again and again, but this time you get to be a driver. The trip doesn’t change – it’s always a grief train – but you get to know the route better the more you ride it.  You see the flourishing farms and the verdant streams more clearly than the dying ponds and abandoned playgrounds.  Most importantly, you get to help others to reach their destination; the best train ride of all.