I use the expression “the elephant in the room” all the time in my coaching practise or when I’m meeting people who want to know what my work includes. “You know that expression, the elephant in the room, that thing that nobody wants to acknowledge is there but everybody knows is there, that thing that keeps getting in your way…that’s the elephant in the room…I teach you how to train that elephant.” Most people understand at that point and we continue our conversation from there…most of the time.
I’m a sister, mother, daughter, friend, wife among other things and yesterday I had the opportunity to go to a girl gathering my sister was hosting at her house. It’ s a nice home, very comfortable and inviting and my sister makes it a point to make sure her guests are well taken care of. I’m very lucky to have her in my life. She, our other sister, a sister in law and my best friend were the girls in the girl gathering this time. We were really having a wonderful time and solving all the problems of the world, you’re welcome, but there was one very big elephant in the room. One of the girls is a recent widower. Her husband of 37 years passed away last November, just over seven months, so she’s still mourning but she’s trying to make her way back. Here in North America, I believe, we do not honour the process of loss. There is an expectation that, once you’ve had your week or two of sorrow, you’ll be right back to normal. I believe that this has been made up for the comfort of the people who are around the grieving person, they don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to say and they don’t know how to act so they have learned that the grieving process “should” have a time limit. If you don’t conform to that rule of grieving time well then surely there must be something wrong with you and nobody else.
GMAB….seriously who made that up? So, yesterday, I acknowledged what everybody was afraid to say..I suggested we all accept that this was a difficult time, that this lovely woman was mourning her husband, that it was not fair, that this was hard to talk about and that she could feel comfortable behaving any way she wanted in our presence. We all started to cry at the point, for her, for her loss, for the acceptance of the acknowledgment, for the truth to be told and laid out on the table to be looked at instead of hidden in a box somewhere…She thanked us afterward, for allowing her to just be herself in all her grief. We thanked her for being so willing to be honest, to share, to teach us…We killed a very big elephant in the room yesterday, all of us girls, and I sure am glad we did…