![but as for me i think love is a load of crap but as for me i think love is a load of crap](https://repeller.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/3_bodyneutrality.jpg)
But one thing that is common to the many different grief theories out there and to the personal experiences of so many grievers is that grief requires time. There is no checklist or timeline that works for everyone, as we have said time and time again. I can hear your question already: when another loss arises, how can you possibly know if you have “grieved the initial loss”? This is a tough question because grief is so individual for all of us. This experience of suffering a second loss before one has grieved the initial loss is sometimes known as “cumulative grief”, “bereavement overload” or “grief overload”. Pain is piled on pain fear on fear the abyss on the abyss. It is all too common that a death is followed by another death. Kind of a downer to see all these expressions for such a painful phenomenon, but I guess on the bright side it shows we are not the first to be overwhelmed by multiple losses (I know I know, a tough sell to find the bright side there, but I figured I’d give it a try).Īs wonderful as it would be to pretend that every time we suffer a loss we have time to process that loss and integrate it into our lives before we suffer another loss, these idioms found in languages around the world point to the sad fact that it is simply not the case. In Russian, “when troubles come, leave the gate open”. In Chinese, “good fortune never comes in two bad luck never comes alone”. In Japanese, “when crying, stung by a bee”. In Latin, “troubles are followed by troubles” and “the abyss attracts the abyss”. In Swedish, German, Spanish, French and a bunch of others, “misfortune seldom comes alone”. In Hebrew, the phrase is “Bad things come in packages”. Turns out those in the English-speaking world are not alone. Luckily a quick “phone a friend” to Google provided some quick answers. I started wondering if this idea (and corresponding idioms) existed in other languages. There are several expressions in English that reflect the idea that when one tragic thing happens other tragic things sometimes follow: “When it rains it pours” (or in British English, “it never rains but it pours”) and some people believe “bad things come in threes”. Do you have any info on that?” I started typing a response to the comment and it quickly went well beyond the length for an appropriate comment reply. The commenter said “I read something a little while ago on cumulative grief, where people have experienced loss after loss. The other day we posted on the blog about different types of grief and we got a great comment pointing out a grief type we hadn’t mentioned, cumulative grief. Types of Grief | Grief Articles for Beginners | Cumulative Grief