Good Grief
This is a blog about grief. It’s about what I have learned and what I have been thinking about in the years since grief forced its way into my life. I have no qualifications except my experience, and am not a published author on this topic. I have spent time mediating, reading and doing work in therapy, and I would like to share it with anyone who needs it.
Grief is universal and pain is personal; this blog is for everyone who is grieving, and anyone who can use it to ease their pain.
When it comes to our vie of death, three things are true:
Death is certain
Time and place of death is uncertain
We have a very uneven experience with death and there’s no consistency in how we talk about it.
Anyone could die at any moment and not everyone has the means to deal with the grief death incites.
You might have months, years, decades left to live and, at the other extreme, you might die next week, tomorrow, before you finish reading this blog. You don’t know. But you do know that you’re going to die. In those three truths lies, I believe, a power we can unlock to being better, living fuller lives.
Because there’s a fourth truth: grief is not just about death.
Grief appears on the occasion of the passing of anything important to us: the time spent in relationships, working in certain jobs, studying in certain schools, living in certain places. Everything comes to an end and often in a way we did not expect. And when that happens, grief appears.
So this blog is about what I learned from people dying; how I came to understand the way I experienced grief, the way I understand its effect on me. And it’s also about how I learned to apply those lessons to life. To gain some control over feelings of grief and to apply those to other challenges I was facing.
Think of it as planning for the future but knowing that all you have is the present; reflecting on what you learned in the past but not losing sight of the here and now; it comes down to acknowledging the presence of death and using that to get more out of life.
If we lean more into grief, with curiosity, respect and gratitude, we will exercise the muscle memory of processing loss. Not to cope but to thrive. And this is a muscle that can help us in so many other ways. If we actively work out, actively stretch this mental muscle when it hurts, we actively help it recover. And then we use these grief muscles again, to process loss and change and sadness in our daily lives, we will do so in a way that transforms us.
We will be more content, more fulfilled and more complete.
These thoughts are not a substitute for grief counselling or therapy. If you are raw with emotion right now, this might in fact be the wrong place for you.
More to come
With gratitude
/ben