Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin
Growing from Grief
Table of Contents
- Why Suffering Becomes the Catalyst for Growth
- From Childhood Pain to Self-Acceptance
- The Many Faces of Grief
- Losing a Child: The Deepest Pain, the Hardest Growth
- Tools That Support Growing from Grief
- The Role of Compassion and Connection in Healing
Grief is one of the most painful human experiences. When we lose someone important, it leaves us bereft and empty. For many people, that emptiness feels unbearable. Often, food becomes a way to cope with the ache of loss. Emotional eating can feel like an attempt to “fill” the void, soothe the pain, or quiet the loneliness that grief creates.
But grief, as guest blogger Dr. Bob Rich so powerfully shares in this guest post, also holds the potential for growth. With emotional eating and binge eating, healing comes not from silencing pain with food, but from learning how to name it, process it, and eventually transform it into wisdom, resilience, and even compassion. Similarly, grief can teach us a lot about ourselves.
That’s why I’m honored to share Bob’s words with you. He writes candidly about his own journey through devastating losses, and how he found ways to not only survive, but to grow. His perspective offers hope: that even in the deepest grief, there is a path toward meaning, connection, and healing.
Take it away, Bob…
Why Suffering Becomes the Catalyst for Growth
“If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” Why change anything when life is good?
When you are held in a cradle of love, when nothing can go wrong, the only thing to do is to enjoy.
This is why suffering is the spur to growth.
Recently, I had the honor and pleasure of being interviewed on a local community radio station. I’m sorry, the audio recording has evaporated, but here is a transcript of the 18-minute chat: wp.me/p3Xihq-3y9
My host, John Weeks, quoted a text message a listener sent to him after one of his previous sessions: “Dear John, I feel incredibly blessed: a tough childhood, many trials along the way. What a gift it’s turned out to be. It’s taught me immense resilience, not only to cope with the past and leave it behind, but resilience and perseverance for the trials to come. It taught me gratitude for all the blessings I receive.”
Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t it true?
As I said to John, resilience is a pogo stick. The harder the world stomps on me, the higher I bounce.
The author of that text message gave us a clear definition of post-traumatic growth.
From Childhood Pain to Self-Acceptance
I should know—I am now a healer precisely because of an infancy and childhood I wouldn’t wish on anyone. As a toddler, I was Hitler’s guest in the Budapest ghetto (this was when you were very young, right?). Fortunately, my mother was excellent at inviting miracles. We survived, thanks to her intelligence, creativity and ruthlessness.
Unfortunately, later she had the bad judgment of falling in love with a man who had no use for children in his life—me, the imported little monster, or his own son. As just one example of how he induced my depression, his judgment of me was, “Protect us from the idiots of the world! If there is a wrong way of doing it, or even if there isn’t, he’ll do it that way first.”
Very funny, unless you are on the receiving end. This is why Miss Stake had been torturing me until I was 43.
When I was 21, I discovered that if someone else can do it, I can learn it. Later, I found out that there is no such thing as a mistake, fault or defect. There are only learning opportunities. And finally, I realized that anyone who has never made a mistake is a liar.
See? Suffering can lead to self-acceptance and wisdom.
Good grief, Bob, weren’t you supposed to write about grief?
Well, I am. My mother was always very busy, but when she was home, I was the center of her attention. I used to make up stories, invented puzzles and jokes, and shared them with her when she could spare the time. She and I used to read books together. But when this man invaded our family, he replaced me as her focus. If you look at it through a little child’s perception, I had lost my mother.
Grief can be two minutes or so for having lost a friendly game, a couple of years if someone you love dies—or decades as the result of childhood trauma. A loss is a loss. But OK, let us focus on bereavement.
The Many Faces of Grief
My mother died in the year 2000, after an extraordinary life. I’d long made friends with my stepfather, and after his death I set her a project to give her something to live on for: I asked her to assemble evidence and provide me with information so I could write a book about her life.
I visited Hungary when she went into hospital for her last stay there, and came home to Australia with two suitcases bulging with photos and documents. I had also interviewed forty people.
I couldn’t even look at any of this material for two years. It hurt too much. When I did write the book, it was the most difficult bit of writing I have ever done, and this is my book that has won the most awards. It is Anikó: The stranger who loved me.
Losing a Child: The Deepest Pain, the Hardest Growth
My daughter died in December 2024. We were very close. My children are among my best friends, and she and I were very similar in nature. She was my wisest advisor and most fruitful critic.
And yet, after her death my life was normal. Oh sure, I miss her and will do so for however much time I still have left while waiting for a full-body transfer. But this is not the savage fire-breathing torturing dragon of grief. I’ve processed that.
For some reason, parents tend to be older than us, our children younger, and so we expect a mother to die before us, a daughter after. And yet, my grieving reaction was reversed in intensity.
The reason is that in the twenty-four years in between, I had run a counseling psychology practice and became the therapist others referred their most difficult cases to. I had learnt heaps from study, personal experience, and above all from my clients.
Tools That Support Growing from Grief
So, when my daughter was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, I applied all this magic box of healing tools to myself.
All of them are validated by scientific research, but you need to use them intuitively. Many are positive psychology techniques. One of them is to find a way of doing good, of turning your loss into a gain for others. So, I have written a book about how to process grief. It is only a little book.
If you’re not currently tortured by grief, you can read it in an hour. Think of doing that as insurance. You are guaranteed to need this knowledge some time or another. But also, what you’ll learn is useful for sources of distress other than losing a loved one, for example the daily news about all the terrible events in our crazy world.
It is short, but packed with punch. It was published in June, and has already been of benefit to many people. The title is The Hole in Your Life: Grief and Bereavement. You can meet my daughter at grief.lhpress.com and look at the table of contents. I have a link there to one of the necessary healing techniques.
I have two longstanding rules. Anyone who sends me proof of purchase of any of my books has earned a second (electronic) book for free. A review qualifies as proof of purchase, well, not for the free book. Also, anyone who subscribes to my blog, Bobbing Around, has the same offer. Do check it out at bobrich18.wordpress.com/
The Role of Compassion and Connection in Healing
I thought it would be appropriate to share one of the many tools that enable me to function well, whatever goes wrong in my life—as long as I remember to use it, which is not always. Sometimes I enjoy a bit of misery as a grumpy old man. This concept works for both physical and emotional pain.
Hurting has two components.
- Something is uncomfortable, like a painful back, or a husband who has cheated on you. Maybe you can do something about it, like taking an analgesic and seeing a physical therapist, or arranging relationship counseling. Or maybe you can’t because you’d rather get rid of the fellow. Action you take may or may not be effective, and anyway, any success will be in the future. Right now, you live in an invitation to suffer.
- You have a choice of how you relate to this discomfort. Regardless of how severe it is, you can react with acceptance: what is, is. Acceptance doesn’t mean helplessness, or allowing bad conduct by another person, but the calm decision to experience the negatives. And when you can manage this, you are not hurting. This is one of the lessons of all the great religions. “As God wills.” “Inshallah.” It is central to Buddhism. “All life is suffering. Suffering is due to wanting. Let go of the wanting, and you stop suffering.”
Don’t believe me. Instead, do a little experiment. Cause a minor pain, maybe 3/10, for example by biting your lip, or pushing the back of your hand against the edge of the table. If you have a large bulldog clip handy, use it to pinch the soft tissue between thumb and index finger. A hand in icy water works, too.
Now, simply observe the sensation. Rate it in your mind out of ten, and allow it. It is allowed to be there, because after all you have caused it on purpose. It’s all right: it won’t cause any damage until about 20 minutes.
Were you able to calmly observe the discomfort? Told you! (Or go to the back of the class.)
I handled severe, 24/24 pain for about three years using this way of thinking. Dealing with chronic pain was one of my specialties, and I have taught it to a great many clients. It works for even the most severe emotional torture as well.
If it were up to me, I would give away my book for free to everyone. My aim is to benefit as many people as possible. But then, my wonderful publisher has been of benefit to me, and he needs to recover his investment and make a reasonable profit. So, please be of benefit to him, to me, and to all the people who need the counsel of this book by buying a copy, benefiting from it, sending me a review, and spreading the word.
One final thought. All sentient beings in the universe are my family. That includes you (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this). If I can be of service to you in any way, you can send me a private message via bobrich18.wordpress.com/contact/
Sick of obsessing about every bite?
GET THE CURE
The Binge Cure Book!
Enter “CURE” to receive a 20% discount.
No, I don’t want access to this terrific resource to help me overcome binge eating.
The Author
In 1972, Bob was the father of two tiny humans and wanted to investigate the kind of future he’d consigned them to. So, while writing up his PhD thesis, he did some side research on futurology: extending current trends to see where they led under a range of assumptions. The results horrified him: they accurately predicted today’s world. He has been an environmental and humanitarian activist since, which, given his current age, makes him a Professional Grandfather. The job specification is to strive for a tomorrow for today’s youngsters, and one worth surviving in. This means replacing a global culture of greed and aggression with one of decency, generosity, cooperation.
Related Blogs
