Grief Is A Journey

When anyone experiences a traumatic event like the loss of someone either from a break up or death, it is natural to go "why me?"

It is normal to feel sorrow and self pity. To feel sad, all sorts of mad and all kinds of bad.

It is as if a part of you dies.

This is because when a person you love is gone, a part of you feels like it is gone too. You lose the part of you that only they knew. You miss them. It hurts in ways there are no words. 

You will wonder how long your heart will forever ache. You will wonder how much more of this missing you will have to take. You will wonder how far you have to bend and yet not break. You will wonder how through the day you are going to make.

Yet you are not gone. You are still alive. So you know you need to live and continue on. 

You don't have to get over your grief. It will come and go. Sometimes you will see it coming. Sometimes, it catches you by surprise. Grief is a shadow. Grief dances in and out of the light and the dark. Grief is not linear. Grief is a journey.

You do have to accept it. To accept that someone is gone is the beginning of the healing process. A big part of the healing is whether you can accept what is. This will take time. You will go up and down. Healing is not a linear process.

It is healing to let waves of grief or pain wash over us.

When we push our pain away or find all sorts of ways to not deal with it, it will catch up with us in some way or another. Accepting is hard. Acceptance helps us not sit for too long in our grief so we won’t let it drive us into all sorts of dark places.  Acceptance allows you to know it is ok to be not ok.

Acceptance enables us to not rush the whole healing process because you cannot speed through pain. When you hurt, you hurt. When you feel pain, you accept that you will go through pain. You cannot hide from it, or always sit above it. You need to own the pain when you feel it and know that it will pass. When you go through it, you are able to get through it.

When your heart gets broken into a million pieces and gets shattered here there and everywhere, you have to pick up the pieces and even go to places you have never been before. Oh the places you will go. Just know it won’t always be like this, and it won’t ever be like then, it will just be different from now on. 

You can’t let your pain become your self identity. Don’t make whatever bad thing that happened to you define you. Don’t let that pain become your story. Don’t let the pain erase the good memories. 

People leave. People die.

But Love doesn’t go. Love doesn’t die. Love lives on. Love changes. Love transforms. Love helps you go beyond.

Imagine the one you love saying to you:

"Look for me in everyone you love. Let me live on in your heart. Even when you walk alone, you are never alone. Give someone a hug whenever you miss me. So that one day, when all that is left of me is love, give me away so that you can get me back." 

Even though you walk alone in your grief, you are not alone.

Let the love you have live on in you instead, so you can keep on writing your story anew each new day. 

Sending you love. Sending you light. Sending you hope. Sending you strength to cope. Sending you hugs.