Losses often go unrecognized and are never addressed. This can increase the intensity of other losses later. Losses are not just those experiences involving the death of a loved one. Any event that destroys a person’s understanding of the meaning of life is felt as a loss and all change involves some form of loss of the way things were.
Creating a Loss History Timeline is a helpful way to identify the losses in your life.
To do so, start by drawing a horizontal line. On the left-hand side of that line, indicate your first conscious memory and date it. Then, working your way toward the right side of the horizontal line, identify each loss you can remember experiencing. As you do, draw a vertical line below the horizontal line and write a brief description of the loss and the date underneath it. The length of the vertical line will indicate the intensity of the loss. If it is an ongoing loss, or one in which the impact isn’t over yet, you can shade the vertical line.
Making a graph such as this not only allows you to visualize the losses you have experienced, but it also helps you to identify the grief work that you still need to complete.
If you would like, you could then add a blessing time line to this same graph. Identify each blessing you remember and use the same process to make a graph above the horizontal line. As in the loss time line, the length of the vertical lines will indicate the intensity of the blessing.
