A Better Way to Recover

Posted on October 24, 2025 by Kevin Brough

A Better Way to Recover: Balancing Life, Relationships, and Healing

By Kevin Brough, MAMFT

Introduction

For decades, the recovery community has operated under a singular mandate: recovery comes first, and everything else must wait. While this principle has undoubtedly saved lives, it has also created an unintended consequence—a generation of individuals in recovery who have learned to prioritize their healing at the expense of living a whole, balanced life. After years of working with individuals and couples navigating addiction recovery, I’ve come to believe there’s a better way forward—one that honors the primacy of recovery while simultaneously recognizing that sustainable healing requires attention to all dimensions of life, particularly our most important relationships.

The Traditional Recovery Paradigm: Strengths and Limitations

The traditional approach to addiction recovery, rooted primarily in 12-step philosophy, has provided a lifesaving framework for millions. The emphasis on admitting powerlessness, surrendering to a higher power, making amends, and serving others has created a powerful pathway out of active addiction (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 2001). The directive that “recovery comes first” has protected countless individuals from the premature return to responsibilities and relationships that might trigger relapse.

However, this single-minded focus can inadvertently create what I call “recovery tunnel vision”—a state where individuals become so consumed with meetings, step work, and recovery-related activities that they neglect other essential life domains. While attending multiple meetings daily may be necessary in early recovery, maintaining this intensity indefinitely can lead to vocational stagnation, financial instability, physical health deterioration, and, most significantly, relationship erosion (Laudet, 2011).

The question becomes: Can we honor the necessity of prioritizing recovery while simultaneously creating space for a balanced, fulfilling life?

The LifeScaping Recovery Model: Work to Live, Not Living to Work

The LifeScaping™ Healing & Recovery Planning System offers a practical framework for answering this question. Rather than viewing recovery as an all-consuming vocation, this approach positions recovery as the foundation upon which a balanced life is built. The philosophy shifts from “recovery is all I do” to “recovery enables everything I do” (Brough, 2025).

The Four Time Categories

The LifeScaping model organizes life activities into four essential categories, each color-coded for clarity and balance:

Planning (Blue) – Recovery Strategy & Goal Setting: This includes scheduling 12-step meetings, therapy sessions, step work, and broader life planning. Rather than reactive crisis management, planning time creates intentionality around recovery and life goals.

Preparation (Red) – Recovery Maintenance & Life Management: These activities maintain the recovery foundation by preparing healthy meals, managing finances, organizing living spaces, and attending to self-care logistics. Preparation activities prevent the chaos that often triggers relapse.

Productivity (Green) – Work, Service & Responsibilities: This encompasses employment, career development, household management, and service to others. Notably, attending meetings and doing step work is interpreted here as the “work” of recovery, alongside income generation and contribution to family and community.

Rejuvenation (Yellow) – Self-Care & Recreation: Perhaps the most neglected category in traditional recovery approaches, rejuvenation includes physical exercise, creative pursuits, recreation, relaxation, and activities that bring joy and restore energy.

The Recovery-First Philosophy, Reimagined

The LifeScaping approach doesn’t abandon the “recovery first” principle—it reframes it. All recovery-related activities receive priority scheduling, but within a broader context of life balance. The underlying premise recognizes that sustainable recovery requires more than abstinence and meeting attendance; it requires physical health, financial stability, meaningful work, nourishing relationships, and activities that bring genuine pleasure (White, 2007).

Research supports this integrative approach. Studies on recovery capital—the internal and external resources that support sustained recovery—demonstrate that individuals with diverse recovery supports (including employment, stable housing, meaningful relationships, and leisure activities) have significantly better long-term outcomes than those whose entire recovery infrastructure centers solely on treatment and mutual support groups (Cloud & Granfield, 2008).

The Missing Piece: Family and Relationship Support

While the LifeScaping model provides a comprehensive framework for individual recovery planning, it illuminates a critical gap in traditional recovery approaches: the role of intimate relationships and family systems in supporting or undermining recovery efforts.

The Couples Paradox in Addiction Recovery

Addiction recovery presents a unique paradox for couples. On one hand, relationship distress is both a frequent contributor to substance use and a common consequence of active addiction (Fals-Stewart et al., 2005). The betrayals, broken promises, financial chaos, and emotional unavailability that characterize active addiction inflict deep wounds on partners and families.

On the other hand, research consistently demonstrates that individuals in committed relationships who engage their partners in recovery have better outcomes than those who pursue recovery in isolation (O’Farrell & Fals-Stewart, 2006). The challenge lies in transforming the relationship from a potential trigger for use into a source of recovery support.

Gottman’s Approach to Couples and Addiction Recovery

The Gottman Method, renowned for its empirically-based approach to couples therapy, offers a particularly valuable framework for addressing this paradox. Dr. John Gottman’s extensive research identified specific interaction patterns that predict relationship success or failure with remarkable accuracy (Gottman, 1999). When applied to couples navigating addiction recovery, these principles become especially powerful.

The Sound Relationship House: Gottman’s Sound Relationship House theory provides a developmental model for rebuilding trust and connection after addiction (Gottman & Silver, 2015). The foundation begins with:

Building Love Maps: Partners learn (or relearn) the details of each other’s inner psychological world—their fears, hopes, dreams, and stressors. For the partner in recovery, this includes understanding the specific triggers, challenges, and supports related to their healing journey. For the non-using partner, this includes acknowledging their own trauma, needs, and recovery process.
Sharing Fondness and Admiration: Addiction erodes the positive perspective partners once held of each other. Deliberately practicing appreciation and respect helps counteract the negativity that accumulated during active use.
Turning Toward Instead of Away: Recovery requires the individual to turn toward their partner for support rather than turning away into isolation or turning against their partner through conflict. This seemingly small shift—responding to bids for connection—becomes crucial in rebuilding attachment security.

Managing Conflict Around Recovery: One of Gottman’s most significant contributions addresses perpetual problems—the ongoing issues that never fully resolve (Gottman, 1999). In recovery, these often include:

Disagreements about the appropriate level of meeting attendance
Conflicts around financial recovery and restitution
Struggles with parenting responsibilities and co-parenting approaches
Tensions around social activities and relationships with friends
Disagreements about disclosure and transparency expectations

Rather than attempting to solve these perpetual problems, Gottman’s approach teaches couples to dialogue about them—to understand the underlying dreams, values, and needs each position represents. A partner’s insistence on attending 7 meetings weekly might represent not just recovery support but also a need for structure, community, and external accountability. The other partner’s desire for more family time might represent not just a practical need, but a more profound longing for reconnection and reassurance about the relationship’s importance.

Building Shared Meaning: Perhaps most powerfully, Gottman emphasizes creating shared meaning—the rituals, goals, roles, and symbols that define a couple’s unique culture (Gottman & Silver, 2015). For couples in recovery, this becomes an opportunity to consciously design a new relationship that honors both recovery needs and relationship needs.

Integrating LifeScaping with Couples Recovery Work

When we overlay the LifeScaping framework onto Gottman’s couples approach, a powerful synergy emerges. Consider how each LifeScaping category creates opportunities for relationship strengthening:

Planning (Blue): Couples can engage in collaborative planning, with both partners’ needs considered. This might include:

Jointly creating a weekly schedule that honors recovery commitments while protecting couple time
Planning date nights and family activities with the same intentionality as meeting attendance
Setting shared financial and life goals that give both partners a sense of working toward a common future

Preparation (Red): Preparation activities offer opportunities for tangible support and shared responsibility:

The non-using partner might support recovery by helping with meal preparation or grocery shopping that supports nutritional wellness
Together, organizing the home environment to reduce stress and support both partners’ well-being
Collaboratively managing finances in a way that rebuilds trust while maintaining necessary accountability

Productivity (Green): Productivity time includes both individual responsibilities and collaborative efforts:

Supporting the recovering partner’s employment or career development
Sharing household and parenting responsibilities equitably
Engaging in service activities together, whether through recovery communities or other volunteer efforts

Rejuvenation (Yellow): Perhaps most importantly, rejuvenation activities create opportunities for joy, connection, and positive shared experiences:

Discovering new recreational activities that don’t involve substances
Engaging in physical activities together that support both partners’ wellness
Creating rituals of connection—morning coffee, evening walks, weekly date nights—that become touchstones of the relationship

The Partner’s Recovery Journey

A critical insight from both Gottman’s work and the broader couples therapy literature recognizes that both partners need recovery support. While only one partner may struggle with substance use, both partners suffer the impact of addiction. The non-using partner often experiences symptoms of trauma, anxiety, hypervigilance, and their own form of recovery needed from living with addiction (Timko et al., 2013).

The LifeScaping framework applies equally to partners. A spouse of someone in recovery needs their own:

Planning time for therapy, support groups (like Al-Anon), and personal goal-setting
Preparation activities that support their own self-care and wellness
Productive work that gives them purpose and identity beyond “partner of someone in recovery”
Rejuvenation activities that bring personal joy and restoration

This parallel recovery journey prevents the dynamic where one partner’s recovery consumes the entire family system, leaving the non-using partner depleted and resentful.

The 12 Life Areas: A Holistic Assessment

The LifeScaping Recovery Balance Wheel Assessment evaluates 12 critical life domains, providing insight into areas of strength and those requiring attention. This comprehensive approach recognizes that recovery exists not in isolation but in the context of a whole life:

12-Step Program & Recovery Work: Meeting attendance, step work, sponsorship
Physical Health & Exercise: Movement, medical care, fitness
Nutrition & Wellness: Healthy eating, supplements, meal planning
Work & Career: Employment, professional development, productivity
Finances & Security: Money management, budgeting, financial planning
Service & Contribution: Helping others, volunteering, giving back
Family & Relationships: Close relationships, family time, intimacy
Social Connections: Friendships, community, social activities
Self-Care & Mental Health: Personal care, therapy, emotional wellness
Recreation & Fun: Hobbies, entertainment, leisure activities
Creativity & Hobbies: Artistic expression, creative pursuits
Spiritual Growth & Purpose: Meaning, values, spiritual practices

When individuals rate their satisfaction in each area (0-100%), patterns emerge. Often, those in recovery rate highly in areas directly related to recovery work (12-step program, service to others) while showing significant deficits in areas such as recreation, creativity, career development, and intimate relationships. This assessment reveals where life has become unbalanced—where the pursuit of recovery has inadvertently created other forms of suffering.

For couples, this assessment can be completed individually and then shared, creating insight into:

Areas where both partners feel satisfied and successful
Domains where one or both partners think neglected or unsupported
Opportunities for collaborative improvement
Ways each partner can support the other’s growth in specific life areas

Practical Implementation: Creating Your Ideal Recovery Week

The LifeScaping system culminates in creating an “Ideal Recovery Week”—not a rigid schedule, but a model that illustrates what a balanced recovery week looks like for a specific individual or couple. The process involves:

Identifying non-negotiable recovery events: Fixed commitments like meetings, therapy, medical appointments, court-mandated activities, and sponsor meetings are scheduled first.
Planning rejuvenation activities: Contrary to conventional prioritization, self-care and recreational activities are scheduled next. Recovery demands significant energy; without deliberate restoration time, burnout and resentment build.
Adding planning time: Regular time for recovery strategy, life planning, and goal-setting ensures intentionality rather than reactive crisis management.
Including preparation activities —time for life management tasks such as meal prep, financial management, and home organization—prevents the chaos that triggers relapse.
Filling in productivity: Work, household responsibilities, actual recovery work (attending meetings, doing steps), and service activities complete the schedule.

For couples, this process becomes collaborative. Partners might create individual Ideal Week plans and then overlay them to identify:

Conflicts in scheduling that need negotiation
Opportunities for shared activities
Protected couple times that both partners commit to honoring
Ways to support each other’s individual needs and goals

The Evidence Base: Why This Approach Works

The integrated approach combining individual recovery planning with relationship support rests on solid empirical ground. Multiple streams of research support this framework:

Recovery Capital Research: Studies demonstrate that recovery capital—the sum of internal and external resources supporting recovery—predicts long-term success better than treatment intensity alone (Cloud & Granfield, 2008). Recovery capital includes not just sobriety and program involvement, but employment, housing stability, financial resources, physical health, social support, and meaningful relationships. The LifeScaping approach deliberately builds recovery capital across all these domains.

Behavioral Couples Therapy: Research on Behavioral Couples Therapy (BCT) for substance use disorders consistently shows superior outcomes compared to individual treatment (O’Farrell & Fals-Stewart, 2006). BCT helps couples:

Increase positive activities and decrease negative interactions
Improve communication skills
Address relationship factors that may trigger use
Develop relationship supports for abstinence
Rebuild trust through demonstrated behavioral change

Self-Determination Theory: Research on motivation and sustained behavior change emphasizes three core psychological needs: autonomy (a sense of volition and choice), competence (a sense of effectiveness), and relatedness (a sense of connection with others) (Ryan & Deci, 2000). The traditional “recovery is your full-time job” approach can undermine autonomy and competence by creating dependency on external structure and limiting opportunities to develop mastery in other life domains. The LifeScaping framework supports all three needs while maintaining recovery focus.

Work-Life Balance Literature: Research in occupational psychology consistently demonstrates that individuals who maintain balance across life domains experience better mental health, greater life satisfaction, and sustained performance than those who overinvest in a single domain (Sirgy & Lee, 2018). While early recovery may require intense focus, sustaining this intensity indefinitely leads to burnout, resentment, and paradoxically, increased relapse risk.

Common Concerns and Misconceptions

Whenever I present this integrated approach, specific predictable concerns arise. Addressing these directly helps clarify the model:

“Isn’t this just codependency?”: No. Supporting a partner’s recovery while maintaining healthy boundaries differs fundamentally from enabling. The approach requires both partners to take responsibility for their own recovery and well-being while choosing to support each other. Enabling involves protecting someone from consequences; support consists in helping someone succeed in their own efforts.

“Won’t focusing on other life areas distract from recovery?”: Research and clinical experience suggest the opposite. When individuals feel trapped in “recovery only” mode, resentment builds. They may maintain abstinence while feeling increasingly miserable, or they may eventually decide that if recovery means giving up everything that brings joy, sobriety isn’t worth it. A balanced approach that includes recovery as the foundation while building a satisfying life on that foundation creates sustainability.

“My sponsor says recovery has to come before everything, including family.” This represents a misinterpretation of the principle. Recovery, providing the foundation, doesn’t require neglecting family—it means recovery enables you to be present for family. An analogy: Breathing comes before everything else, but that doesn’t mean you spend your entire day focused exclusively on breathing. You breathe so you can do everything else. Similarly, you do recovery so you can be the partner, parent, employee, and person you want to be.

“We tried involving my partner before, and it made things worse.” Relationship involvement in recovery requires timing and structure. In very early recovery (the first 30-90 days), individualized focus may be necessary. Additionally, involving partners requires appropriate therapeutic support. Bringing a partner to recovery meetings without addressing relationship dynamics often increases conflict. The structured approach of the Gottman Method or other evidence-based couples therapy provides the necessary container for healing relationship wounds while supporting recovery.

Challenges and Realistic Expectations

Implementing this integrated approach involves navigating several challenges:

Timing: Very early recovery often requires intensive individual focus. The transition to a more balanced, relationally integrated approach typically occurs after initial stabilization (usually 90 days to 6 months, though this varies individually).

Treatment System Resistance: Some treatment programs, sponsors, or recovery communities may view relationship focus or life balance as threatening to recovery. Finding recovery supports that embrace a holistic approach requires intentional searching.

Both Partners’ Readiness: The non-using partner may not be ready to engage in couples work, may have sustained their own trauma requiring individual treatment first, or may be considering leaving the relationship. Couples’ work requires both partners’ willing participation.

Competing Life Demands: Real-world constraints—employment demands, childcare responsibilities, financial limitations—may restrict the ideal balance. The framework provides a goal to work toward, not an immediate expectation.

Ongoing Triggers and Challenges: Recovery isn’t linear. Periods of higher risk may require temporarily intensifying the recovery focus, while stable periods allow a more balanced approach. The approach requires flexibility and ongoing adjustment.

Conclusion: Recovery as Foundation, Not Prison

The better way to recover recognizes that sustainable healing requires both focused attention on addiction and deliberate attention to all dimensions of a satisfying life—particularly our most important relationships. The LifeScaping framework provides practical tools for creating this balance, while Gottman’s approach offers specific methods for transforming intimate relationships from casualties of addiction into sources of recovery support.

Recovery remains the foundation—the necessary prerequisite for everything else. But foundations exist to support structures built upon them. A foundation alone isn’t a home; it’s the beginning of one. Similarly, recovery alone isn’t a life—it’s the beginning of one.

When we combine structured recovery planning with relationship repair and enhancement, we create conditions for not just abstinence, but flourishing. We shift from merely surviving recovery to actively living a life worth living—one that includes meaningful work, creative expression, physical vitality, spiritual depth, authentic relationships, and genuine joy.

This is not a choice between recovery and life, between meetings and family, between service and self-care. It is an integration—a both/and rather than an either/or. Recovery enables life, and a satisfying life supports recovery. Our intimate relationships provide the same both/and: recovery allows us to be fully present in a relationship, and healthy relationships support our recovery journey.

The question is not whether recovery comes first—it does. The question is: recovery first as a foundation for what? The answer, I believe, is a balanced, connected, meaningful life. That’s not just a better way to recover—it’s a reason to.

Use the BETA version of the “Healing & Recovery” LifeScaping Planner HERE

Ascend Counseling and Wellness – ascendcw.com – 435.688.1111 – kevin@ascendcw.com

References

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services. (2001). Alcoholics Anonymous: The story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism (4th ed.). Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Brough, K. (2025). LifeScaping™ Healing & Recovery Planning System. VISIONLOGIC.

Cloud, W., & Granfield, R. (2008). Conceptualizing recovery capital: Expansion of a theoretical construct. Substance Use & Misuse, 43(12-13), 1971-1986. https://doi.org/10.1080/10826080802289762

Fals-Stewart, W., O’Farrell, T. J., Birchler, G. R., Cordova, J., & Kelley, M. L. (2005). Behavioral couples therapy for alcoholism and drug abuse: Where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 19(3), 229-246.

Gottman, J. M. (1999). The marriage clinic: A scientifically-based marital therapy. W. W. Norton & Company.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work: A practical guide from the country’s foremost relationship expert. Harmony Books.

Laudet, A. B. (2011). The case for considering quality of life in addiction research and clinical practice. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 6(1), 44-55.

O’Farrell, T. J., & Fals-Stewart, W. (2006). Behavioral couples therapy for alcoholism and drug abuse. Guilford Press.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68

Sirgy, M. J., & Lee, D. J. (2018). Work-life balance: An integrative review. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 13(1), 229-254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-017-9509-8

Timko, C., Young, L. B., & Moos, R. H. (2013). Al-Anon family groups: Origins, conceptual basis, outcomes, and research opportunities. Journal of Groups in Addiction & Recovery, 7(2-4), 279-296. https://doi.org/10.1080/1556035X.2012.705713

White, W. L. (2007). Addiction recovery: Its definition and conceptual boundaries. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 33(3), 229-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2007.04.015

About the Author

Kevin Brough, MAMFT, is a marriage and family therapist specializing in addiction recovery and relationship repair. He is the creator of the LifeScaping™ Recovery Planning System and works with individuals, couples, and families as they navigate the challenges of healing from addiction while building satisfying, balanced lives.

Finding Meaning in Loss & Disappointment

Posted on May 22, 2025 by Kevin Brough

Walking Through the Valley: Finding Meaning in All Forms of Loss

When the fabric of your life suddenly tears—whether through death, divorce, job loss, or any fundamental change that disrupts who you thought you were or where you thought you were going—it can feel like wandering into an endless darkness. I know this valley all too well: the contours of grief that stretch into infinity, the fog that clouds everyday moments, the weight that presses upon your chest even when you’re trying to simply breathe.

Grief is not just an emotion; it’s a journey, a process, and sometimes, a brutal teacher. What I’ve come to understand through my own experiences and in supporting others through their losses is that grief isn’t limited to death. We grieve broken dreams, ended relationships, lost health, career changes, children leaving home, friendships that fade, and the thousand small deaths that shape a human life. Grief is the response to any significant loss—anything that changes our understanding of ourselves or our world.

Expanding Our Understanding of Loss

While most of us associate grief with bereavement—the death of someone we love—grief can accompany any event that disrupts our sense of normalcy or challenges our identity. The Cleveland Clinic defines grief as “the experience of coping with loss” that can accompany “any event that disrupts or challenges our sense of normalcy or ourselves” (Cleveland Clinic, 2025).

Consider the many forms of loss that can trigger grief:

The death of a loved one or pet
Divorce, separation, or the end of a significant relationship
Loss of health due to illness, disability, or aging
Job loss, retirement, or career changes
Infertility, miscarriage, or reproductive challenges
Children leaving home (empty nest syndrome)
Loss of a home, financial security, or lifestyle
Friendship endings or geographic moves that separate us from community
The diagnosis of a serious illness in ourselves or someone we love
Loss of physical or cognitive abilities
Shattered dreams, goals, or expectations that don’t materialize
Loss of innocence, safety, or worldview following trauma
Changes in someone we love due to addiction, dementia, or mental illness

Each of these losses represents a form of death—the death of what was, what we expected, or what we hoped would be. As HelpGuide notes, “Any loss can cause grief,” and it’s essential to understand that “whatever your loss, it’s personal to you, so don’t feel ashamed about how you feel, or believe that it’s somehow only appropriate to grieve for certain things” (HelpGuide, 2025).

Understanding the Landscape: The Kübler-Ross Model Across All Losses

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross originally developed her five-stage model while working with terminally ill patients, but these stages have since been applied to many forms of loss and change. The stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—provide a framework for understanding our emotional responses to any significant disruption in our lives (Kübler-Ross & Kessler, 2005).

Denial: The initial shock and disbelief that serves as a protective buffer when unwelcome news first hits. “This can’t be happening.” Whether it’s a cancer diagnosis, a pink slip, or the discovery of a partner’s infidelity, denial helps us cope with information that threatens to overwhelm us.
Anger: The outrage at the unfairness of it all, often directed at others, ourselves, or circumstances beyond our control. “Why is this happening to me?” This might manifest as rage at an ex-spouse, fury at a former employer, or anger at our own body for betraying us.
Bargaining: The desperate negotiation in which we attempt to reverse our loss or regain control. “If only I had…” or “Maybe if I…” We might bargain with God, try to win back an ex-partner, or obsessively research ways to reverse a medical condition.
Depression: The profound sadness that settles in as reality becomes unavoidable. “I can’t bear this.” This might look like mourning the life we thought we’d have, grieving our former identity, or feeling overwhelmed by an uncertain future.
Acceptance: We should not be happy about our loss, but acknowledge reality and find ways to move forward. “I’m ready to live with this new normal.” This might mean rebuilding after divorce, adapting to a new health reality, or creating meaning from career setbacks.

It’s crucial to understand that these stages aren’t linear checkboxes to mark off. We might cycle through several stages in a single day or revisit stages we thought we’d completed months later, triggered by an anniversary, a familiar song, or an unexpected reminder of what we’ve lost.

Beyond the Stages: The Search for Meaning in All Forms of Loss

While the Kübler-Ross model gives us vocabulary for the emotional landscape of loss, Viktor Frankl’s work offers something equally valuable: a pathway forward through any form of suffering. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist who developed logotherapy, proposed that our primary drive is not for pleasure or power but for meaning.

In “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Frankl wrote about how finding purpose in the most horrific suffering enabled survival in Nazi concentration camps. His insights apply to any form of loss we might face. Frankl identified three ways to find meaning in life: through work, through love, and through suffering (Frankl, 1959/2006).

When we face any significant loss—whether it’s the death of a relationship, the loss of our health, or the shattering of our life plans—we’re often confronted with what Frankl called an “existential vacuum.” This profound emptiness and loss of direction can occur whether we’re grieving a person or the person we thought we were.

In this void, we have the opportunity to choose meaning. This doesn’t minimize our loss or suggest that everything “happens for a reason,” but instead acknowledges our capacity to determine what our suffering will mean to us and how we will carry it forward.

Creating meaning through work: Perhaps you channel your experience with infertility into supporting others facing similar struggles, or your job loss leads you to discover a more fulfilling career path. Your loss becomes the catalyst for meaningful contribution.

Creating meaning through love: Maybe your divorce teaches you about your capacity for resilience and leads to deeper, more authentic relationships. Your experience of loss deepens your ability to connect with and support others.

Creating meaning through suffering: Your illness, financial setback, or family crisis becomes a teacher, showing you strengths you didn’t know you had or clarifying what truly matters in life.

The Road Forward: Insights from M. Scott Peck

In “The Road Less Traveled,” M. Scott Peck offers wisdom that applies to all forms of loss and change. Peck begins with a stark but liberating truth: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths” (Peck, 1978/2003). Once we accept this reality—rather than expecting life to be easy, fair, or predictable—we’re better equipped to face its inevitable challenges and losses.

Peck emphasizes several principles that serve as companions on any grief journey:

Discipline: All forms of grief require emotional and spiritual discipline. Whether we’re processing a death, divorce, job loss, or health crisis, we must delay the gratification of quick fixes and easy answers, accept responsibility for our healing process, dedicate ourselves to the truth of our experience, and balance confronting our pain with continuing to live.

Love as Action: Peck’s perspective on love is that love is not a feeling but an activity and investment (Peck, 1978/2003). In any form of grief, we continue to express love through remembrance, extending ourselves for others’ growth, and eventually, opening our hearts again despite the risk of future loss.

Grace: Sometimes our healing comes not through our own efforts but through unexpected gifts of insight, connection, or peace that seem to arrive just when needed—whether it’s an unexpected job opportunity after a layoff, a new friendship after a move, or a moment of profound acceptance amid illness.

Navigating Different Types of Grief

Anticipatory Grief

Sometimes we begin grieving before the actual loss occurs. This might happen when we know someone is dying, when we’re facing an inevitable life change like retirement or children leaving home, or when we recognize that a relationship is ending. Anticipatory grief can allow you to prepare for your loss, resolve any unfinished business, or say your goodbyes (HelpGuide, 2025).

Disenfranchised Grief

Some losses aren’t socially recognized or supported, making our grief feel illegitimate. This might include grieving the end of an affair, the loss of an abusive parent (where we think we “should” be sad but instead feel relief), a miscarriage, or a pet’s death. Society may not validate these losses, but they are real and deserve to be honored.

Ambiguous Loss

Sometimes we lose someone who is still physically present but psychologically absent due to dementia, addiction, or severe mental illness. We grieve the person they used to be while navigating a complex relationship with who they’ve become.

Cumulative Grief

Multiple losses occurring close together can compound our grief, making it difficult to process any single loss completely. This might happen during major life transitions when we deal with job changes, moves, health issues, and relationship shifts.

Finding Your Path Through the Valley

Drawing from these frameworks, here are insights for navigating any form of grief:

Validate Your Experience

Your grief is legitimate regardless of what you’ve lost. Whether it’s a death, divorce, job loss, health crisis, or shattered dream, your feelings deserve acknowledgment. Don’t let others minimize your experience or rush your process.

Recognize Grief in Disguise

Sometimes we don’t recognize we’re grieving because the loss wasn’t a death. Feeling sad, angry, or lost after a job change, move, or relationship ending is normal. These are grief responses, and they deserve the same care and attention we’d give to bereavement.

Honor Your Unique Process

Your grief fingerprint is as unique as you are. Some people need to talk, others to be silent. Some need community, others solitude. Some find comfort in rituals, others in activity. There is no “right way” to grieve any type of loss.

Connect with Sources of Meaning

Ask yourself: What can this loss teach me? How might this experience help me grow or serve others? What values or strengths is this crisis revealing? What matters most to me now? As Frankl suggests, meaning can transform suffering from merely endured to purposeful.

Practice Radical Self-Compassion

Grief can bring waves of unexpected emotion—guilt about feeling relieved after a complicated relationship ends, anger at ourselves for not preventing a loss, fear about an uncertain future. These feelings are not failures but natural responses to significant life changes.

Seek Appropriate Support

Not everyone can handle the reality of grief, regardless of its source. Find those who can sit with you in your pain without trying to fix or rush you through it. Professional counselors who understand loss, support groups for your specific type of grief, and spiritual advisors can offer invaluable guidance.

Give Yourself Permission to Grieve

We live in a culture that’s more comfortable with certain types of grief than others. Allow yourself to grieve whatever you’ve lost, even if others don’t understand. Your loss matters because it mattered to you.

The Unexpected Gifts of All Forms of Grief

While there is nothing positive about loss itself, the journey through grief, regardless of its source, can yield unexpected gifts:

Deeper compassion for others facing similar losses
Clarified values about what truly matters in life
Increased resilience and confidence in your ability to survive difficulty
Greater appreciation for what remains in your life
Stronger connections with others who understand your experience
Personal growth and self-discovery that might not have occurred otherwise
Spiritual development and a more profound understanding of life’s meaning

Living with Integrated Grief

The goal of moving through grief isn’t to “get over” your loss but to integrate it into the new person you’re becoming. Whether you’ve lost a person, a relationship, health, a job, or a dream, that loss becomes part of your story. The question isn’t how to forget or minimize what you’ve lost, but how to carry it forward to honor its significance while allowing you to continue growing.

Psychologists now speak of “continuing bonds” rather than “letting go”—the idea that we don’t sever connections with what we’ve lost but rather transform them. This applies to all forms of loss. You might carry forward the lessons learned from a failed relationship, the values instilled by a job that shaped you, or the perspective gained from a health crisis.

Conclusion: Grief as Universal Teacher

Loss is the price we pay for having loved, hoped, dreamed, and invested ourselves in life. Every connection we make, goal, and identity we embrace carries within it the seeds of potential loss. This isn’t a flaw in the system—it’s the system itself.

Grief teaches us that we are resilient enough to love despite the risk of loss. It shows us what matters most when everything else is stripped away. It connects us to our deepest humanity and others who have walked similar paths.

As Frankl observed, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances” (Frankl, 1959/2006). This freedom applies to every form of loss we might face.

Peck reminds us that growth comes through confronting life’s difficulties, not avoiding them (Peck, 1978/2003). Every loss we face—death, divorce, illness, job loss, or shattered expectations—offers the opportunity for transformation.

The journey through grief isn’t about returning to who we were before our loss. It’s about discovering who we can become because of it. Honoring what we’ve lost while choosing to continue growing creates meaning from suffering and transforms our pain into purpose.

Whatever form your grief takes, remember that it is both an ending and a beginning. It marks not just what you’ve lost, but who you’re becoming in response to that loss. And in that becoming lies both the challenge and the promise of being fully human.

Kevin Brough – Ascend Counseling & Wellness – Ascendcw.com – 435.688.1111

References

Cleveland Clinic. (2025, March 19). Grief: What it is, symptoms, and how to cope. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24787-grief

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1959)

HelpGuide. (2025, March 13). Coping with grief and loss: Stages of grief and how to heal. HelpGuide. https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/grief/coping-with-grief-and-loss

Kessler, D. (2019). Finding meaning: The sixth stage of grief. Scribner.

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.

Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. Scribner.

Peck, M. S. (2003). The road less traveled: A new psychology of love, traditional values, and spiritual growth (25th anniversary ed.). Touchstone. (Original work published 1978)

Tyrrell, P., Harberger, S., & Schoo, C. (2023). Kubler-Ross stages of dying and subsequent models of grief. StatPearls Publishing.

Flow

Posted on May 14, 2016 by Kevin Brough

Zen stack

We need to Accept w Wisdom, Change w Courage, and FLOW around lives challenges!

FLOW

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the former head of
psychology at the University of Chicago.

Noted for his work in happiness and creativity –
Csikszentmihalyi is best known as the architect
of the notion of flow.

What is flow?

According to experts, “Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus,
full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

Athletes call it “The Zone.”

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It’s a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing
emotions in the service of performing and learning.

In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.

The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.

Can you start thinking of ways being in “Flow” could help you in particular areas of your life?

Csikszentmihalyi identified these 9 factors that accompany the “Flow” experience:

1- Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.

2- Concentrating, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and
to delve deeply into it).

3- A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

4- Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.

5- Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).

6- Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).

7- A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.

8- The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.

9- People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

Sounds like a lot to consciously focus on, doesn’t it? But in true FLOW it just happens!