I’ve written this blog in order to channel my feelings of loss into something larger than myself. If you've experienced a loss, it's my hope that you will find comfort in knowing that you're not alone on your grief journey.
I'm aware that you have good days and bad days. On the bad days, you might find yourself on the floor curled in a ball wailing. You wish that the floor would open up and swallow you whole. Your cries of despair come from deep within your core. It's as if someone has a tight grip on your heart and won't let go. It's like you're suffocating. You don't know how you're going to get out of this moment so you simply allow the feelings to take over your body. You cry to the point where there's nothing left to purge.
When your grieving session is over you slowly pick yourself up off the floor and recognize that during this period of time, neighbors have grocery shopped and walked their dogs. It feels insulting that the world doesn’t pause to take notice of the suffering you're enduring. This is when you realize the harsh reality that life goes on around you even when you don't feel ready to re-engage with the world. This is when you understand that you too will eventually have to jump back onto the bandwagon of the seemingly mundane.
You want others to understand you but only until they feel the anguish of loss can they truly comprehend the depths of grief. If they haven't experienced loss it’s like asking them to imagine a color that they've never seen before. This isn’t to isolate those who haven’t experienced the death of a loved one but it's to acknowledge and honor the often lonely road this can be for those who have. When these well-meaning individuals ask how you're doing, you've trained yourself to respond, "I'm ok" because it's just too complicated to really let them in. You build a wall around you because you don't know what else to do. Secretly, you're hoping that someone will knock down your wall but as time passes, you learn that it's your responsibility to remove each brick one at a time.
Grief is a concoction of pain that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, however there's more to it than the pain. When you feel like you can’t move forward because you're so paralyzed by pain an unexpected sense of peace begins to seep in. This is what can propel you forward. As you move forward, you discover a strength about yourself that you never knew existed. You rediscover yourself as if you're meeting a hero for the first time. You catch yourself laughing with friends and you think, “Whoa! I'm having a happy moment? What's going on?" For me especially, the magnificence of the journey of loss is getting reacquainted with my spirit. From tragedy tremendous spiritual growth can be birthed.
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