How to walk forward in life with grief by my side.

Where is the guidebook on how to proceed with life during grief? There isn’t one. Just as there is no guidebook on how to parent. Because there are an infinite number of ways to parent. There are an infinite number of ways to grieve. And both require so much grace, compassion, and patience.

While I can’t speak to what it’s like to parent a human (other than myself), I can speak to the treacherous land of grieving while living in a world that is fast paced and filled to the brim with expectations. Expectations of how we are to show up in work, in our home life, and in relationships to name a few.

What has become clear in the few months since Josh’s death is that grief is undeniably unpredictable and messy. It usually slams into you when you are least expecting it. It arises as anger, sadness, frustration, confusion, existential feelings. It arises as a wail, a scream, crying, putting up barricades around the heart, or the most profound gratitude you’ve ever felt while at the same time a deep sustained ache in your heart. Like something is missing. Or someone. Because it is. They are. They are gone in the way that you once knew them to exist. The relationship does not end, and that can bring comfort and that can feel like the purest love when you think of the beloved you have lost.

And in those moments when you are in grief, you miss them so much your body cannot bear it. It hurts on repeat. You fall to the floor. You surrender to your bed, couch, whatever. You pull over on the side of the road and let your insides fall out through fat tears streaming out your eyes. And you may not want to hurry along the pain because in a weird way the pain is also evidence that you loved them so.

Eventually - the grief loosens its grip. Eventually - when we soften to it - maybe the knot around our heart, the lump in our throat, gradually begins to dissolve. The sun shines a little more brightly. The cool water tastes a little more crisp with each sip. We begin to inch out the other side of this spell of grief. Only to know, the grief will return. 

So there is no guidebook to grief. Each of us experiences grief differently. I thought I knew mine so well, I thought I had mastered it. Until Josh’s death. There is now a new layer to grief. And the work of living and loving becomes existing and being with this new layer. The work becomes about holding hands with grief, even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it becomes an inconvenience to others. 

And I hope that you find your own way to hold grief’s hand. And I hope that you find your way to live alongside your grief. Because this process is essential to your heart, your soul, and your humanness.

May you find the space, the people and places where your grief can fully breathe.