Character Healing

I didn’t know what to title this blog because the five stages of grief sound so depressing. A romance novel is uplifting, at least at the end, and nothing at all like grief. We read a love story for the joy of ‘happily ever after.’ But grief is a part of life and sometimes our characters suffer from it either before the story begins or during the story itself.

If we’re writing women’s fiction or a literary novel, then emotional pain and angst aren’t particularly unusual. But in a love story, the hero or heroine may have lived through a terrible romantic experience in the past. It could be a break up, a death, or a divorce, though divorce isn’t normally found in Christian fiction.

I always had the impression that the bitterness, sadness, or anger of a great emotional upheaval should take place in the character’s past and not impact the person in the present, at least not to a great degree. The hero or heroine will be influenced by this former relationship, but is now free to love again. The experience might have made her wary of someone hurting her yet again, but it’s given her some wisdom and depth of character. So when the right man comes around she’ll be emotionally ready, even though it won’t happen immediately. While the pain may linger, she’s no longer ‘crippled’ by it. By the end of a romance, ‘love conquers all.’

It’s important that the hero and heroine have some internal obstacles keeping them apart. Sometimes it’s a romance gone terribly wrong. In historicals, it’s often the death of a loved one that’s quite traumatic to the character.

A story needs both internal and external conflicts to make it the best it can be. A conflict relating to a past romance gives it an excellent backstory which helps the reader understand the hero or heroine.

In my opinion, a problem between the main character and a parent or sibling is weaker than a romantic problem experienced in the past. It’ll have a direct lingering effect that will impact the characters in present love story.

But I wonder what would a story be like if either the hero or heroine was still in the middle of recovering from their grief when a new, potential love came into their live. Could one help the other to recover from the pain that keeps him from moving forward into a new, happy life? Or does the main character have to already be past every one of the five stages of grief first? Tell us what you think.

Teddy Roosevelt is an interesting example. A baby girl was born to Teddy and his beloved young wife, Alice Lee Roosevelt. Two days later Alice died from undiagnosed kidney failure which had been masked by her pregnancy. He said, “The light has gone out of my life.” That same day his mother, Mittie, died from typhoid fever in the same house.

Distressed and grieving, Teddy left the baby in the care of his sister for three years! He focused on his work to forget his awful loss. He rarely spoke about Alice and didn’t mention her or his second wife, Edith, in his autobiography.

He married Edith a few years after Alice’s untimely death. They had five children but he worried he’d lose her in childbirth, too. He didn’t. She outlived him.

It’s a fascinating story to me because obviously Teddy recovered enough to remarry, continue on with his life and even become President. The pain never completely left him. But after his initial shock and grief subsided, he married again and accepted the risk of another tragedy. I think he was brave not to wallow forever in his misery. He didn’t wait until he’d fully recovered to marry Edith. If he had, he’d probably have been single for the rest of his life because he never completely overcame his loss of Alice.


Our story people who suffer a big loss also go through the five stages of grief just as real people do. Some go through fewer stagers, some go through more.

DENIAL

Life makes no sense, we feel numb. It’s God’s way of letting in only as much as reality as we can handle at the beginning. We’re shocked and in denial. As we begin to accept the loss, we are starting the healing process. But all our feelings come to the surface.










ANGER

We might feel anger toward the doctors, family, friends, the loved one herself and even God. Underneath the anger is the pain of feeling deserted and abandoned. It may be anger at the situation and not the person.











BARGAINING

Before a loss we may bargain with God to heal our loved one. We may promise God to be a better person or help the poor etc. We want our old life back. Sometimes we think we could’ve done something differently and saved the person we love. We remain in the past as we try to rid ourselves of the pain.











DEPRESSION

This is a normal state after a great loss, not a true mental health issue. Our grief is deep and it feels as if it will last forever. We will be sad, we may withdraw from family and friends, or think life isn’t worth living. But this is just part of the healing process.








ACCEPTANCE

We finally accept what we can’t change. We don’t want to accept our loss, but we don’t have a choice. This is about accepting reality. We learn to live with the new normal even when we don’t like it. We can even feel happiness once in a while. We have to change, grow and evolve. We start to live again, but first we have to give ourselves time to grieve.

I think one of our main story people can be at any stage when he meets someone he’s attracted to. Personally, the Depression Stage or the Acceptance Stage seem plausible to me. The hero needs her to help him work through his loss and his grief and then they can begin their own love relationship. By the end of the story, the hero heals with the help of his new love.

At what stage would you start the story if your heroine is still grieving?

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