Once again, I am thinking about semantics and would appreciate your input. Don’t feel you have to answer all of the questions that follow in order to comment. Any response will be greatly appreciated, whether it directly answers one of the questions or comes at the topic from an angle I have not thought to ask about. Feel free to ask other questions in response.
Before I start asking, I know that this way of thinking with incessant and nit picky questioning frustrates and annoys some people. If you are one of those people, I hope you will bear with me or temporarily ignore me for this post, and then come back when I’m less annoying to you 
. This is the way my brain thinks and sorts through things. It is not the only way nor necessarily the best way. But, it is how I think. And I find it helpful to be able to do so out loud and invite other people to contribute to what I am processing.
Now for some of my questions:
How do you define grief and mourning? How do you see them as similar and different?
Can a person get “stuck” in one or both of these states, and if so, how does that look? Is there a connection between grief or mourning and depression? Or is the loss of hope in depression something quite distinct from prolonged grief or mourning?
Can joy and peace coexist with one of these more easily than with the other? How about faith and hope? Do you think these “positive” emotions alleviate or relieve grief or mourning? If not, how do you see grief or mourning looking different with the presence of joy, peace, faith or hope, compared to the sadness of grief or mourning without joy, peace, faith or hope?
Are the sad genres of music more expressions of grief or mourning? Or something else?
What other similar words do you think of which fit into the same general domain? How do you see these words overlapping or contrasting?
When I read through the Psalms and the prophets, there is a frequent expression of sad emotions, which I think of as “lament”. Do you think such lamenting is expressing more grief or mourning, or does the word “lament” imply any expression of anguish, regardless of the type or degree of anguish?
Do you think people in general are more comfortable with either grief or mourning? What are some of the emotions that are stirred up in you as you see people walking through either grief or mourning? What is it about either of those emotions that is disconcerting or uncomfortable?
What do you think are some appropriate responses to either grief or mourning? Do they call for different or similar responses? (Admittedly, formulaic responses are rarely helpful, and that is not what I’m trying to establish here. I’m more thinking about generally the needs and pain being expressed by grief or mourning and whether one’s heart response would be different when listening to or sharing in grief vs. mourning).
Is either grief or mourning a more lonely place? Is one or the other more easily to enter into with another person or group of people?
What are some expressions of either grief or mourning which have moved you deeply–personal stories, memoirs, memorials, songs, poems? I’d love to hear either general categories or specific examples.
What a great question. Fortunately, so far, I’ve been spared the experience of what some describe as grief and / or as mourning. But I’ve been around plenty of people who are experiencing it (mostly parents who’ve lost their children to cancer, who say you never ever ever stop feeling the loss–though society tells you you must some day and sooner rather than later).
Two of the best books I’ve ever read on the subject are C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed (written pseudonymously after his wife died) and Sheldon Van Auken’s A Severe Mercy written after his wife died.
“Does grief finally subside into boredom tinged by faint nausea?” Lewis asks. “Feelings, and feelings, and feelings.” Later he acknowledges . . . “And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. [the pseudonym for his deceased wife, Joy] least, I remembered her best…You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.”
Lewis doesn’t seem to distinguish the two (grief and mourning). In a letter to Van Auken, in the latter’s book, Lewis writes that the two men share the same notions and experiences:
“We are…much at one in our reaction to grief…My recent discovery is that when I mourn Joy least I feel nearest to her. Passionate sorrow cuts us off from the dead (there are ballads & folk-tales wh. hint this). Do you think that much of the traditional ritual of mourning had, unconsciously, that very purpose? For of course the primitive mind is v. anxious to keep them away.
Like you, I can’t imagine real Eros coming twice. I still feel married to Joy.”
Just exploring here. I think in our vernacular we use grief as the constellation of emotions surrounding the process of reacting to and healing from loss. Mourning seems the more formalized, intentional and conscious aspect of grief. Grief happens. Mourning is one word we use to describe how we grieve. Mourning is more formalized in some cultures than others–that’s why we may not understand or appreciate a certain culture’s ritualized period of mourning or its customs.
When it comes to death in our culture, we don’t seem to have much of a system for mourning after the funeral is over and the casseroles stop being dropped off. But grief goes on…
How do you define grief and mourning? How do you see them as similar and different?
I understand grief to be a feeling of sadness due to some loss. Mourning is the *process* of interacting with that sadness. Grief is a state; mourning is a a process; it involves a decision to interact with the sadness. Mourning can be a positive thing to help us move forward through our gried, or it can be mostly negative.
Can a person get “stuck” in one or both of these states, and if so, how does that look?
Yes
Is there a connection between grief or mourning and depression?
Absolutely; i’ve been there, mourning the loss of a healthy childhood.
Or is the loss of hope in depression something quite distinct from prolonged grief or mourning?
I don’t think it is.
Can joy and peace coexist with one of these more easily than with the other?
I don’t think so. I think they can coexist with both grief and mourning.
How about faith and hope?
Same as previous answer.
Do you think these “positive” emotions alleviate or relieve grief or mourning?
They might but I don’t think they necessarily should. I don’t think that grief should be alleviated. It is an important emotion God has created for us and we need to experience it if we have experienced an important loss. We need to allow the process of dealing with grief to run its course, not short-circuit it, so that it comes back in some other form to bother us later.
If not, how do you see grief or mourning looking different with the presence of joy, peace, faith or hope, compared to the sadness of grief or mourning without joy, peace, faith or hope?
Joy, peace, faith, and hope are appropriate “tools” to help us as we deal with grief. They should never substitute for grief. But they give us, well, hope (!), that things will feel better. But feeling better is not the purpose of dealing with our grief. Too many people want to feel better when what they should desire is to become whole, to paraphrase something C.S. Lewis said.
Are the sad genres of music more expressions of grief or mourning? Or something else?
They can be expressions of grief or mourning but they can be separate from them. Sadness is not the same as grief. Sadness can come from other sources than loss. Listening to sad music when we are grieving can be an important tool to help us get in touch with our feelings associated with the loss. It’s OK, proper, even godly to experience those feelings.
What other similar words do you think of which fit into the same general domain?
sorrow
sadness
melancholy
depressed
down
How do you see these words overlapping or contrasting?
Each one is different from grief and mourning but they all include something of a sad feeling.
When I read through the Psalms and the prophets, there is a frequent expression of sad emotions, which I think of as “lament”. Do you think such lamenting is expressing more grief or mourning, or does the word “lament” imply any expression of anguish, regardless of the type or degree of anguish?
I personally see lament as expressing both grief and mourning. I’m sure that deep grief would be very close to anguish, although anguish is not necessarily triggered by loss as grief is. Anguish is a very intense emotion.
Do you think people in general are more comfortable with either grief or mourning?
I think that in our Western society we are not comfortable with either. We rush the grieving process. We give people false statements about “getting on with” life, about “letting God take care of your sorrow”, etc.
I think in Western society we have largely lost the cultural rite of mourning. We do experience grief but we often do not know what to do with it and our friends and society do not help us much. We need to observe how cultures which affirm mourning help those who are grieving. The Cheyennes, with whom we worked, set aside an entire year for a person to mourn. They are expected to mourn during that time, not to function as usual in society. They are supported as being in mourning. Then at the end of the year they are “called back” into the rest of society.
What are some of the emotions that are stirred up in you as you see people walking through either grief or mourning?
compassion
shared sadness
fellowship of suffering
concern
What is it about either of those emotions that is disconcerting or uncomfortable?
The “negative” sense we have about these emotions. We have improperly stigmatized them in our society, so we do not have healthy feelings about them.
What do you think are some appropriate responses to either grief or mourning?
“Go with the flow” (in a good sense)
Work through the process
Feel the feelings
Don’t deny them
Try to associate with people who affirm the feelings.
Do they call for different or similar responses?
If someone is only feeling grief, but not mourning, then I think we should lovingly affirm their grief and encourage them to mourn. We may have to learn how to mourn, as well, to help them mourn. There are grieving workshops or share groups available in many communities to help us with the mourning process. People in the same group will be mourning, as well.
(Admittedly, formulaic responses are rarely helpful, and that is not what I’m trying to establish here. I’m more thinking about generally the needs and pain being expressed by grief or mourning and whether one’s heart response would be different when listening to or sharing in grief vs. mourning).
Is either grief or mourning a more lonely place?
I don’t think one is necessarily more lonely than the other. Loneliness is determined by how the sad person and their society respond to the grief. If we cut ourselves off from others, because we fear that they will not understand our grief (and they quite possibly will not), we can feel lonely, isolated. We need to find people who have healthy attitudes about grief and mourning to walk with us so that we don’t feel so lonely.
Is one or the other more easily to enter into with another person or group of people?
I don’t think so. It helps when a society has rituals for mourning.
What are some expressions of either grief or mourning which have moved you deeply–personal stories, memoirs, memorials, songs, poems?
Songs especially sung to express grief. Journaling my grief. Reading the honest expressions of others who have grieved or mourned can be helpful.
I’m not much help here. My only real comment is one Wayne already said: grief is a feeling and mourning is a process. If you had asked the difference between grieving and mourning, I’m not sure I would have a good answer.
I’m also not much help in the sense that, really, I haven’t been through that much grieving in my life. I’ve lost my father and my grandmother, but the sadness and grieving really did lessen after about a year.
I have had a few disappointments in life, but I’ve been fortunate and blessed that they haven’t been so big as to be debilitating in the long run. I do feel empathy and sympathy to those who hurt and grieve, but I guess in many ways I truly don’t feel it in the same way they feel it.
And, not to sound flippant here, but one thing I recently did to help myself feel better about a long-term problem something/someone was to pretty much intentionally lower my perfectionist standards and let God be more “to blame” than myself if things don’t go just like I would like. That also helps me not to be so manipulative.
Great and thought provoking questions. I think one’s faith, joy and peace can hold up through any suffering that they go through as they follow Christ. Christ is the one that imparts the faith, joy and peace to His followers in the midst of their suffering including mourning, grief or depression. The key is keeping one’s eyes fixed on Christ.
(Hebrews 12:2 NIV) “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
(1 Peter 2:21 NIV) “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
gaj
I think grief and mourning are similar, but that one is an emotion that comes and goes while mourning is an established method or plan of grief—mourning happens after a traumatic event and goes through different stages.
Grief can happen at any time after a sudden loss or in deeply frustrating circumstances.