Grief and Difficult Days
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Some days are really hard.
This is one of those days.
Today came out of the blue, unexpectedly, for no reason really.
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Grief and Fear
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n the beginning of my journey with grief, it was like a thick fog that went with me everywhere. It felt like I was a world away, living in a different realm, barely hanging on to this one.
However over time, the grief has lessened. My feelings about this have been mixed. On one hand, it is healthy and natural for grief to lessen. On the other, it feels a bit odd to live without feeling grief so intensely. Some days it feels as if a new person has emerged. And I must admit that I miss the grief that I once felt so deeply, as it was also so much tied with memories of the person I lost.
Read MoreGrieving: From Death to Life
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There were many times when I wanted to give up. The pain was too great and immense. Loss is not just in the immediacy of it, but in all the reverberating ways in which it affects you and your life. In many ways, you must learn how to live again, how to breathe again. I am here to say that it can be done.
Read MoreFinding Meaning and Purpose in Pain, Grief, and Loss
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It’s different for everyone, but for me, grief was like walking through the valley of a shadow of death: a place where I walked and walked with seemingly no hope — just darkness and shadows and the faintest of light.
Read MoreHow to Handle Anxiety and Fear After Divorce
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After my divorce, the future seemed very uncertain. Suddenly, there was no longer an anchor to my life — no familiar structure or plan. There were many possibilities, but it felt as if there were almost too many — I could start a new job, move to another part of the country, go back to graduate school. The possibilities were endless and overwhelming.
Read MoreFinding Purpose in Pain
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I believe that there is a greater purpose to pain. I believe pain and suffering can be transcended -- transformed into something good. That we have a purpose in our lives, and our job is to discover that purpose, to align our lives with it. I believe that by following this energy and light, we move toward the wholeness we were made for.
Read MoreVirginia Woolf, My Mother, and I: Bipolar and Leaving the One You Love
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There is a strange clarity to madness, one in which everything is twisted around. When I was a child, my mother went through a period in which she went 'wild' according to my father, served him with divorce papers, and gave him full custody of me. For years, I wondered why. Whenever I asked her, she said it was because she loved me and knew that I would live a better life with him. Her explanation never made sense to me -- all the other children whose parents had divorced lived with their mothers, not their fathers. It seemed selfish for her to leave me with him, so that she could be free and live life childless however she wanted. It sounds like a simple thing when put into words like this, but I felt a lot of pain over the loss of her throughout my adult life. Never being a recipient of a mother's love does something to a person. There is always an emptiness, a guardedness.
Read MoreHow Suffering Can Be a Gift
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Some people live their lives simply going through the motions. I should know -- for many years, I was one of them. I was alive, but not truly. Although my eyes were open, they did not see. I lived life to pass time, always working toward the next thing. I was not fully present or aware.
Read MoreCreated for Love
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The death of love is very sad, and in many ways unnatural. We were created to love, created for our hearts to grow and expand. When love dies, it is as if you must learn how to walk all over again. Eventually, you do learn, but it is always with a limp. Along the way, people will help you walk with this limp, and some may even teach you how to dance with it.
The people who stop along the way to help you along will move you with their grace and compassion. They will teach you to love again, how to see yourself and life itself with new eyes. Eventually, you see that the love never died, but has only shifted, grown into something new. Something you never imagined. Something good.
To be human is to love. It's okay to yearn and to long for wholeness--that's how we were created. Because the truth is that love never dies and it always wins.
With gratitude,
E
13 Truly Genuine and Beautiful Quotes on Gratitude
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Happy Thanksgiving week everyone! There is something about loss which causes you to step back and take a difficult look at your life. You can come away from this process bitter and hardened. Or you can come through it awakening to a deeper sense of gratitude and love.
Read MoreHow Loss Taught Me to Stop Giving a F*ck
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You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of f*cks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a f*ck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get f*cked.
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
An Incredibly Beautiful Quote on Grief and Loss
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While I was grieving the loss of a loved one over this past year, a friend sent me this quote, which gave me a lot of comfort. It comes from a Reddit thread, in which a kind man gives a young woman some advice on grief and loss. Although it is well known on Reddit, I don't think it is well known outside of it, so I thought I'd post it here.
Read More19 Inspirational Grief Quotes to Help You Cope with Grief and Loss
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When I experienced loss this past year, I found a lot of comfort in quotes. Just knowing that other people had been where I was currently standing and had somehow made it through, gave me a lot of hope. Here are some of the quotes that I found most helpful.
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