Finding Agency in Grief
I’ve been thinking a lot about agency, and why it matters.
Agency is feeling like you have control in your life. It’s trusting that your actions can create a desired reaction, that you’re capable of having an impact, and that you can create the conditions that you want in order to live how you want to live and feel how you want to feel.
When we experience a big loss, we often also lose a sense of agency. No matter how successful or effective you’ve felt in life, the truth is that there are places where you have no control.
A relationship ends, and it wasn’t your choice. You’re laid off from your job. The person you love dies with no input from you as to when, how, or why.
When the worst happens, the feeling that we have no control can become magnified. How do I trust that I can create anything good if this can happen, and there’s nothing I could do to stop it? How do I create any sense of control when I can’t even control whether I burst into tears in the middle of my workday?
It’s when we feel no agency that it can become even more important to find or create it. Not because it will fix everything, but because if we don’t believe that we have control of anything, it becomes a huge leap to believe that maybe one day life might become a little more bearable.
In pop culture, this often becomes distilled into positive thinking, i.e., “It’s not what happens to you, but how you respond that matters.” I’m not here to argue with that, but in acute grief, I’d like to suggest something even more basic.
When everything feels out of control, sometimes we can regain a sense of agency by recognizing the everyday choices that we’re already making.
This might look like recognizing the times that you. . .
take a shower, even when you don’t feel like it
peel yourself off the couch and take a walk around the block.
keep up some of your daily routines.
choose what you eat, what you wear, where you go, and who you see.
When we recognize things like these as choices we’re making, we remind ourselves that we have a tiny bit of agency. Not enough to stop the worst from happening, but enough to remember that we have ways to care for ourselves through it.
At some point, your sense of agency might become more purposeful. It might shift to things like choosing who you do (and don’t) share your feelings with, reflecting on what it means to have a meaningful life after your loss, and finding ways to consciously process your grief.
If you can’t even fathom what that looks like right now, you aren’t alone. You don’t have to start there to regain a sense of agency. Start with choosing one small step toward feeling a tiny bit better. Open a window. Brew a cup of tea. Bury yourself under the comfort of a cozy blanket.
Even when life is happening to you, there are choices to be made. When a thousand decisions have been made for you, what are the tiny ones that remain? How might you reclaim one of these for yourself? How might it feel to recognize the places where you have choice, even when so many choices aren’t yours to make?
As always, take gentle care of yourself.
