I’ve never known something to exist, to be so prevalent in your life, yet be something so intangible, so invisible, so quiet, that it lingers in every corner of your house, your life, and your existence. It is a passenger, something you carry with you wherever you go, something alongside you for the ride of life that continues with each passing day.
Grief.
The sadness. The wishing for something that isn’t. The bargaining for changing the one thing that went wrong that you just wish would have gone right. The one thing that changed your entire world.
The missing.
The hoping.
The waiting.
The reminder that this isn’t going away. Grief is here to stay, most likely for a long time, possibly carried alongside you for the rest of your life.
You try to “accept it” because that’s what others tell you to do. It stands beside you in the grocery store, the gas station, the school drop off…it’s a passenger, beside you each day. No matter where you go, it creeps in.
Most say it will get better, with time. Others say the path to healing isn’t linear, and there will be ups and downs. Others say as the tide ebbs and flows, so do the waves of grief.
It’s been my experience that once you experience grief, real grief…you are changed forever. You can never “go back” to what you knew before, or who you were before, because you look at the world differently.
It’s almost, perhaps, like seeing the world for the first time. Really seeing it. Recognizing that no matter the pain, the grief, the sadness…it is here to stay.
This means that your life, now, is totally different than it ever was before. This means that now you navigate a world that feels and looks so completely different and new and unusual, because it’s life with grief, instead of the life you were living before, without it. Maybe this is acceptance. Accepting you won’t go back to whatever it was, before.
It has been difficult for me to feel rushed in this process. To “get over” the pain of something so challenging and heart wrenching, like the major, lifelong illness of your only child, and to feel like I should be “better now” or “over it.”
I just want to say to anyone out there experiencing loss or grief of any kind – loss of a child, a miscarriage, an unfortunate circumstance, loss of a job, of a loved one (spouse, brother, sister, parent, etc) – or even the loss of something that “could have been” – it is OK to NOT be over it. Those people don’t live your life or truly know what you’ve been through.
It is OK to have a trigger when you walk to the park in your neighborhood and see the person who has what you don’t anymore, the thing that was taken away from you, or the thing you thought you were going to experience, then never had the chance to.
It is OK to feel sadness that you were naïve enough to never really understand grief, what it was, or how you could get to this point, before it happened to you.
I listened to a TedTalk by Nora McInerny (if you’ve never heard her TedTalk about grief, please listen to it). I’ll link it here.
During this talk she discusses the loss of her second pregnancy, her father, and her husband, all in a very short amount of time. Her overarching message in this TedTalk is that other people want you to “get over it” because grief is so uncomfortable. They want you to, essentially, “move on.”
She gives everybody the space in her message to really carry their grief forward with them, and recognize that if you aren’t experiencing grief, it is OK to let others carry their grief with them, and not rush them in the process.
If you are experiencing grief, you don’t have to remain in the past until you move on from it. You don’t have to accept it and be done with it before you can start living again.
You may not ever “get over it” you guys. Hearing this gave me so much relief. It was as if, for the first time, someone gave me permission for it to be OK to still grieve, and to not be “over it.”
Grief, memories, sadness…it isn’t meant to be left behind. The memory or the pain or the trauma you experienced, it’s there for good, because it happened. Grief has made me who I am, and it has made you who you are, and without it, you wouldn’t be who you are today.
You don’t need to be afraid of it. It isn’t all-consuming, because you can experience grief alongside other emotions at the same time, and there are so many other wonderful things you experience daily – joy, love, happiness, gratitude, hope, and more. Grief is just a small part of the kaleidoscope of emotions you have, ever-changing, expanding and contracting as you move about life’s twists and turns, but it isn’t all of you.
Grief will be along for the ride, and it’s up to us to invite it along. Sometimes, you can feel it, really feel it, right there with you, and at times, it can be overwhelming. Then, at other times, other emotions will envelop you and fill you up more, casting the grief aside for a while. But remember, in a small, small way, we must feel grateful for the grief as well. Because if there wasn’t any grief, then there wouldn’t have been the joy of the thing you lost, either.
Grief doesn’t have to stay in the past, and you don’t have to move on from it. It’s something that is now a part of you, and it can be interwoven into the sorrow, pain, joy, and love of the future. It can live with you, and all of your other emotions, and it’s OK. You’ll be OK. Grief is forever a part of you, but not all of you.
A passenger to life, but not the driver.