When her husband died of cancer 10 years ago, Becky Aikman says she experienced grief and adapted to her loss -- but not in the way some people seemed to expect.
proactive：有前瞻性的，主动地
About a year after his death, when Ms. Aikman
felt it was time to start rebuilding her life, she attended a widows support
group meeting. She arrived and found a tissue box on each chair, she recalls.
The group leader talked about the five stages of grief, each woman described her
husband‘s death and everyone cried.
Afterward, Ms.
Aikman spoke to the leader and, pointing out that the group was called ‘Moving
Forward After Loss,‘ she asked, ‘Couldn‘t we focus on the future or moving on?‘
He told her he didn‘t think she fit in and asked her not to
return.
‘There is an expectation that a proper widow
maintains this cliche of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow,‘ says Ms. Aikman, now 58
and living in Brooklyn, N.Y. ‘She doesn‘t go out, doesn‘t laugh, doesn‘t date.
The idea is that you have to do a penance almost, for years.‘
cliche：陈词滥调，腐朽的
perpetual：永久的，不断的
penance：苦修，忏悔
Almost five decades after psychologist
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross‘s 1969 book ‘On Death and Dying,‘ the grieving process is
still popularly understood to happen in five stages -- denial, anger,
bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
But in recent
years researchers and experts have found little evidence that these stages
exist. People who bounce back after a death, divorce or other traumatic loss
often don‘t follow this sequence. Instead, many of them strive to actively move
forward.
traumatic：外伤的，创伤的
‘The traditional model of
bereavement is that there is work to do,‘ says George Bonanno, a grief
researcher and professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University‘s
Teachers College, and the author of ‘The Other Side of Sadness.‘ ‘There has
never really been any evidence for that.‘
bereavement：丧友，丧亲
Each person‘s grieving is unique, of course. But in a 2002
study of older men and women who had lost spouses, Dr. Bonanno found that in 50%
of the participants, the main symptoms of grief -- shock, anxiety, intrusive
thoughts, depression -- had lifted within six months. ‘The majority of people
can function pretty soon afterward,‘ he says.
intrusive：侵入的，打扰的
Instead of five stages, Dr. Bonanno compares
grief to a swinging pendulum. People get very upset and then feel better -- over
and over again. A person may be crying and then suddenly laugh at a funny joke
or memory. In time, the periods between pendulum swings get longer and gradually
the pain subsides.
pendulum：钟摆，摇摆不定
People often feel guilty
about moving on, says Camille Wortman, professor of social and health psychology
at Stony Brook University, in New York, whose research focuses on grief. ‘This
is why it doesn‘t work to just try and feel better,‘ she
says.
It‘s important to ask yourself, ‘What matters
most in my life at this time?‘ Dr. Wortman says, and then focus on the answer.
It might be your children, your health, your job or a passion for music or art.
‘Stay in touch with your values,‘ she says. ‘This can activate positive emotion,
which provides a respite from grief.‘
respite：缓解，休息
The
advice boils down to: Get out and try something fun. Psychologists call it
‘behavioral activation.‘ The idea is that feeling bad can lead to a downward
spiral: You stop going out, quit exercising, sleep poorly, gain weight. Doing
enjoyable things can reverse this trend.
Steve Govoni
has been widowed twice. After his first wife died in 1998, he read about how the
stages of grief are like a slow climb out of a valley. Mr. Govoni had two small
children and a demanding job as a supervisory analyst. ‘Languishing in that
valley wasn‘t a viable option, so I just soldiered on,‘ he
says.
soldier
on：坚持下去，迎着困难干
In time, he met a wonderful woman and
remarried. Then last March, his second wife died after an 18-month battle with
cancer. This time, Mr. Govoni decided to tackle his grief head-on. He looked up
old friends, took his son to Rangers games on his visits home from college and
worked on enlarging his wife‘s gardens. He took his daughter to Broadway plays
and volunteered as the photographer for her high-school drama
productions.
‘Grieving is never easy, but the
combination of doing a job I love and maximizing quality time with friends and
my daughter made it easier to move on,‘ says the 64-year-old senior financial
writer, who lives in Rowayton, Conn.
Ms. Aikman, a
newspaper reporter at the time of her husband‘s death, used her journalism
skills to research better ways to move through grief, with the idea that she
might even write a book. She found out that grief doesn‘t go in stages, but in
waves. ‘So I learned that this feeling of taking two steps forward and one step
back was normal,‘ she says.
She wondered: Why not form
a support group of her own? She put out the word and found five other women who
had been widowed between six months and two years. They planned to meet once a
month on a Saturday night, emotionally the toughest night of the week, Ms.
Aikman says. After their first meeting, the women made plans to try new
activities together instead of sitting around talking about loss. ‘We needed to
change if we wanted to be happy.‘ Ms. Aikman says.
The
women took a cooking class; went on a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
that focused on works about recovery and renewal; spent the weekend at a spa;
shopped for lingerie; helped one member move into a new home; volunteered at a
camp for children who had lost a parent; and invited several widowers over to
compare experiences. Their grand finale was a trip to Morocco.
renewal：更新，恢复
Through it all, they talked about how to move forward,
to date, to deal with children, to merge families when they remarried. They
discussed grief, too, of course -- but only when it came up naturally in
conversation.
Ms. Aikman eventually wrote a book about
the women and their friendships; ‘Saturday Night Widows‘ came out last year. Ms.
Aikman says she has heard from hundreds of people who are relieved to learn
their grieving process wasn‘t strange even though it doesn‘t fit the stereotype.
Many people said they‘d been inspired to try something new -- getting a dog,
taking a trip, buying a car. One woman went to a jazz club alone, another
learned to snowboard. Quite a few decided to form their own support
groups.
‘If you want to be happy, you have to grow and
change,‘ Ms. Aikman says. ‘And pushing yourself into new experiences is the way
to do that.‘
每日英语：Proactive Advice for Dealing With Grief: Seek Out New Experiences,布布扣,bubuko.com
每日英语：Proactive Advice for Dealing With Grief: Seek Out New Experiences
原文：http://www.cnblogs.com/yingying0907/p/3597314.html