Image from Wonder Park, Paramount Pictures
Have you seen the kid’s movie Wonder Park? I’m one of these people who loves kids movies. I loved them before I had kids and now I have kids, I just have a bigger excuse to watch them.
I’m not here to review Wonder Park (the critics will tell you it’s predictable and not worth watching). But, what I took from it was this accurate and beautiful depiction of a young child’s grief while her mother is away recovering from (I presume) cancer. The child responds to her grief through avoidance by completely destroying any trace of a complex fantasy world co-created by her and her mum. So many legit streaming tears throughout… #unresolvedgrieftriggering
The most incredible metaphor arises within though. Of the necessity to enter into the darkness within this fantasy world in order for the young girl to become the hero she needs to be, and in turn, move through her grief. It’s brilliant. My kids didn’t grasp it I don’t think, but they’re young.
Grief is shit. Simple. We don’t ever wholly ‘recover’ from it in the sense that it disappears forever. We move through and backwards into it in phases and stages of helplessness, despair and acceptance. An amazing psychiatrist named Kubler-Ross created one of the primary theories of grief still held today segmenting it into neat packages of denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. These all hold true in the experiences of my clients. It is never a straightforward linear journey though. Instead, it’s one where memories re-emerge, bringing us right back to where we thought we had already progressed through.
What Wonder Park reminded me of is the necessity to fully allow ourselves to experience the grief we are in whatever dark form it takes. Everyone has unique experiences and these deserve self validation and kindness. If we avoid our grief, try to move from one uncomfortable feeling to the next, the grief perseveres. Perhaps for even longer.
If you are experiencing ongoing debilitating grief in some form right now, ask yourself, ‘Am I avoiding some of the feelings I have been having?’. From my professional and personal experience, anger is one example of an emotion often well obscured in grief. It’s challenging and may seem wrong to be angry with someone who has left us. But perhaps it is necessary. Anger doesn't need outward expression. It, like any other emotion, just needs acknowledgement.
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This, too, shall pass. (from a Persian Fable)