Jill’s 29-year-old son died of a drug overdose late last year and was found in a portable toilet in Los Angeles. Distraught and running her fingers over her tired eyes, she recounted how a sheriff had come to her house to tell her what had happened.

“It’s about your son,” he began. “Don’t tell me my son is dead!” Jill screamed. “Don’t do it!”

With tears in her eyes, Jill told me how she would have broken everything in her house and started running as fast as she could if the sheriff hadn’t been there. That is the impact of pain.

I visualize some of the pain-filled faces in our Grief Program, some drawn, some with thin lips or puffy eyes; people who strike in the midst of anguish, loneliness and confusion known as pain. John just couldn’t fill it out anymore. Karen felt as if the pain was eating her alive. Tina had run out of tears.

Some in that room had long-lasting relationships with pain. Unresolved childhood experiences of loss of confidence can keep us in a state of “I have to accept pain as a permanent condition.”

The pain can become so familiar that it seems like a member of the family. We build an identity around our pain. We have a relationship with her. We build walls around our walls of pain that keep pain out but keep out joy, happiness, and other people. We become our stories.

Many of us have suffered so much loss that we don’t remember why it hurts more. Loss upon loss upon loss, it all ended like a ball of yarn. Another defeat comes, and it is one more lap around a huge ball of pain. Over time, we may begin to feel detached or numb. Life does not touch us in the depths of our hearts.

Some may wake up one day and find that they have completely turned off their feelings. Others call someone like me and say, “I can’t forget that my husband left me” or “My life stopped when she died.”

We are puzzled by not knowing what to do with unresolved pain. It sounds so overwhelming.

Some of the reasons we suffer badly are because we want to show a good facade to others, to be strong for children or friends. Some think that the tears are evidence of weak faith, so they follow the movements and try to act recovered. Others try to think that they feel better.

The result? Getting caught up in fear, isolation, anger, and despair. Experiencing nightmares, hallucinations, and eating disorders. Throw in a healthy dose of guilt and you have a recipe for depression. Now, as author Sam Keen wrote: “Those who refuse to cry are trapped in melancholy.”

Fourteen years ago, my two children were killed in a terrible car accident. Jeremy was 4 years old and Amelia was 18 months old. A car crashed into us on a dimly lit highway in the middle of nowhere. In an instant I discovered that no matter what I knew, who I knew, or how much money I made, I was ill-prepared and completely devastated.

Like so many others who are drowning in pain, I did not lack the courage to recover; He just didn’t know where to turn. I did what everyone wanted me to do: try to get over it. Acting like everything is fine and putting on that “I’m fine” face.

Many of us have suppressed pain over the years. Maybe it’s a sad movie or listening to a friend’s battle with cancer, and little by little we feel our throats tighten. Our feelings surface and lodge there. Many of us reject those feelings. “Come on sweetheart, stay still!”

Many still suffer from unresolved or repressed negative emotions that they thought they had dealt with. Some get lost in the religious experience. Some immerse themselves in the problems of others or turn to alcohol or drugs as false comforters. Some try to work through the pain until they collapse in bed.

All offer only temporary relief. Like a rubber band, it always breaks. We can continue to suppress feelings, drive them away, or medicate ourselves until losses become an increasing burden. Then we wonder why life is not the happy and joyful experience that we have always imagined.

We often talk about the pain of loss. Sometimes it is no longer pain at all; it is detachment. Suffering people can become controlled, off, and disconnected. Chris, forty, for example, refused to deal with his complaint, “Even though I have a full freight train, I know.”

Chris described how a police officer had fined her that day for driving 85 miles per hour. The officer had warned him that he could die at that speed. “I told him I didn’t care. I’m so indifferent, why would I care if he died?”

I asked Chris about her children and her husband. “Oh, they would be fine. The children are older and could take care of themselves. Besides, they have their grandparents. My husband? He would be remarried in three weeks!” he said half jokingly.

People who suffer from accumulated hurts turn off their feelings because they don’t want to be hurt any more. “If this is the way life is played, then I don’t want to play.” They have given up on intimacy and stopped risking their relationships. As Tina Turner sings, “Who needs a heart when a heart can break?”

Regret often permeates unresolved grievances. When Jeremy died, my first thought was an unfulfilled promise to allow him to burn energy by running through the moors of England. I regret it and look forward to another chance, just five more minutes with him. But those minutes never came.

Others wish: “If things had turned out differently” or “If only I had been there in time.” All dreams, hopes and expectations frustrated. As a result, we can feel flawed by having normal, natural reactions to loss.

However, grieving people do not break down and do not need to be repaired. They need to be heard in an atmosphere of safety, respect and dignity, without evaluation or advice, which is just criticism in disguise anyway.

Today I am pleased to say that I am emotionally complete with the death of my two beloved children. It’s not that I somehow “got over it”; that event is still a very important part of me. But I have learned to incorporate that loss and my abiding love for them into my life. He needed to enjoy the good memories of Jeremy and Amelia. He needed to remember them not just for the way they died, but especially for the way they lived.

The step-by-step method of the Grief Program helps those trapped in confusion and loneliness to move beyond the loss by completing the incomplete emotional relationship. Provide the right skills that we were never taught. By saying goodbye to conflict, pain, and isolation, we can preserve the good memories of our loved ones forever.