So many aspects of grief

Dusk is my favourite time of day… The gentle evening sounds, the twinkling lights, the sense of exhaling after a busy day, the heat finally lifting. The full moon rising over the mountain…

I’ve been thinking, this evening, of a beautiful conversation I had about grief yesterday. About understanding grief, and what it feels like in those first awful days, and how to support someone else as they live through grief.

It surprised me how strongly I still feel about so many aspects of grief – the fact that we expect people to ‘get over it’ and put on a happy face, the lack of support, the never ending boring heartache of it all.

I was asked if I had been changed, irrevocably, by losing my mom… and I have. I worried, for months after she died, that I would never feel light and happy again, that I was permanently damaged. And I’m glad to say that #slicesofjoy reached out and saved me from that.

But I am still changed. Altered. Life has been harder in the years since my mom died – and not only because of my dad’s many health crises. There’s a naive carefree essence that didn’t survive – and that feels right, and appropriate, and still a little sad.

It is easier to believe in the gravity of life when the worst thing has happened.

And it returns, always and forever in an endless cycle. I am able to function joyfully without my mom and I also miss her fiercely. Both/and.

Grief, hey.

#grief #griefawareness #griefsupport #griefjourney #griefandloss #slicesofjoy