Grief is the process between losing and learning to live with that loss.
The harder you loved, the harder you’ll grieve.
Those of us who are not in the denial game want to feel this loss and to hold it close, so that its blade can cut. When those wounds become scars, they are felt reminders of the amount of our loss and the love that remains.
You can grieve a death, an ending, something you realise you never had (a parents’ full support, say, or understanding from a partner). Loss comes always and everywhere. If we never lost anything we would never gain anything new: every new step requires that we leave the last footprint behind.
Beware those who dance around their grief with busyness and denial. The grief is there, but it is not being processed. This is a like a cupboard full of junk that you keep dancing past, the cupboard stays full of junk. One day, when they try to shove that latest piece of crap in there, the door won’t shut any more and the whole messy lot of it comes tumbling out at once. This might look like ill health or even breakdown.
Beware those who give a time limit for grief. Your grief belongs to you. Nobody has the right to dictate to you how much you should be feeling it, how you express it or how long it should take.
How the hell would they know what you are feeling and what you need?! You barely know yourself and you are living it. Have you noticed that the ones who tell us how to do something are often the very same ones shoving all that rubbish into that cupboard and tap-dancing by it every day singing, “Nothing to see here”
Grief is love in absentia.
After a time you realise that the love goes on, that it is alive. The person has gone, but the love remains.
For those grieving something they did not have, a sober mother or a kind dad, say, the love becomes what you hold for yourself. You are grown now and you are learning how to love yourself in the way that they could not. There is peace in that process, and the quietness of heart that comes with forgiveness.
For those grieving the end of a relationship, the love shows up in the gratitude you have for the children you made together or in your capacity to remember past times of joy.
We need to grieve better and we need to acknowledge our losses with our friends and beloveds. Only then will we get better at allowing the process in ourselves; only then will we become more patient and generous as we travel alongside a friend moving through theirs; only then can we help our children to understand and move through their own losses and sadnesses.
Sarah x