The Long Grief Journey

Yesterday was my dad’s and grandmother’s birthdays. They both died this year so this was a big day of firsts. This is the meal I had “with” my dad yesterday in honor of him. 

What comes up a lot with folks when talking about grief is just how hard it all is, and how much “work” it can feel like to learn how to be with it, sit with it, metabolize it. And the work… it’s so murky. Right? Like, you can work towards running a marathon and if all goes well, you run that marathon. You can work to study for a huge exam and if you do the work, you pass the exam. People train to climb highest mountains or swim to unheard of depths. But what do you get from working through grief? What’s the goal?

As a therapist and someone who writes about grief and talks about it privately and publicly, I’m here to tell you… I don’t know. I wish I did. I have no idea what the goal is except for one thing and it’s that we keep on at it and figure out ways to turn our pain into something usable and helpful, for ourselves and others. But other than that? There’s no bringing loved ones back. There’s no changing the past when it comes to trauma in relationship. There’s no getting time back. It’s a total mind trip. So I guess, I want to just let go of all of that and get with what’s up which is that life is such an epic mix of beauty and horror, love and hate, life and death, ease and struggle. And we’re all here doing it together. Isn’t that something? 

And we all have our gifts, no matter how fancy or simple, to offer. And one thing I’ve noticed is that our gifts get more fine-tuned with age and experience. And somehow, and I deeply believe this, we are helped when we keep offering our gifts out. Even if there’s tears in our eyes when we’re making the offering. 

We just have to keep at it. 

~ Bradie