Relief from Grief

Grief is an overwhelming experience that can be difficult to process.

In my experience, the key to moving through grief requires intentionally expressing and releasing these intense feelings as they come, through conversation, movement, or other forms of release like therapy or grief support.

By doing so, we work to continually feel and manage our grief, without letting it bottle up to a point where we become overloaded and exceed our capacity to cope.

Maybe this will help.
~Beautiful Ramblings

Thank you p.p.griffith

Grievers measure time differently.

I was talking with a woman earlier today and she mentioned that her husband had died 27 months ago.

Not a little over two years. Not "a couple of years ago."

Twenty-seven months.

I remember measuring time the same way.

First it was days.
After a month or so, it became weeks.
Then months.
And now, for me, it's "almost 14 1/2"

I haven't reached the full-year stage.

I've often wondered why we do this.

Maybe death creates a new reference point in our lives. There is suddenly a very distinct before and after, and the day our person died becomes the starting point from which we measure everything.

Maybe it's because grief is so granular in the beginning. We notice every day. Every week. The first Sunday. The first birthday. The first trip to the grocery store. The first time we realize we've gone an entire afternoon without thinking about them.

And perhaps counting gives us a tiny sense of control. Death is something we couldn't control. Grief isn't something we can control. But we can count the days, weeks and months. We can put a number on something that otherwise feels impossible to measure.

And then there's the strange contradiction of time in grief.

How can it possibly have been 27 months?

And at the same time:

How can it only have been 27 months?

Both can be true.

Maybe counting is also a way of maintaining our relationship with the person who died. Saying "27 months since he died" isn't simply reporting the passage of time. We're still placing them on the timeline of our lives. Still acknowledging that they were here. Still acknowledging that they matter.

Eventually the numbers get bigger because more life has accumulated around the loss.

Days become weeks.
Weeks become months.
Months become years.

But the person doesn't become less important because the number gets bigger.

The calendar moves forward. The relationship continues.

Sydney - Until Death Do We

🎯🎯🎯
~Beautiful Ramblings

Grief Is Not a Process

When Peyton died, everyone referred to grief as a process.

The term I heard a lot was “grief work.”

I remember thinking about that word.

Work.

It sounded like something I was supposed to do.

A beginning.
A middle.
And eventually, an end.

But I don't think that's how grief works.

By definition, a process is a series of actions, steps, or changes that lead to a specific result or goal.

And that's where I think we get into trouble.

Because if grief is a process, it can create the expectation that there is somewhere we're supposed to get to.

That eventually we'll finish the work.

That we'll resolve the grief.

That we'll be over it.

I don't believe that.

Grief is not resolved.

Grief is not cured.

And I don't believe the goal is to get over the person we loved.

Instead, I think grief becomes assimilated into everyday life.

It becomes part of us.

Part of our history.
Part of our identity.
Part of the person we've become because of the person we loved.

Peyton was part of who I was before he died.

His death didn't erase that.

It changed it.

I learned how to live with his absence, but I didn't stop having a relationship with him in my memories, my stories, the things he taught me, and the ways he continues to be part of my life.

Maybe that's why I don't like the idea of grief as something we eventually complete.

Love didn't begin with a process.

And it certainly doesn't end that way.

We don't finish loving someone because they died.

We learn how to carry that love differently.

And maybe that's what grief really is.

Not a process with an ending.

But love becoming part of who we are.

Sydney — Until Death Do We

Starting 5th November ❤️