Grief.

Today marks one month since a childhood friend of mine lost her daughter and her husband in a drunk driving accident. My previous post, “I am so angry” was my reaction to this senseless tragedy. It was me putting my grief into words. A few weeks after I wrote that post, I pulled out my book of meditations. The daily meditation that day (November 2nd) was about grief. I flipped back to the 1st. Also about grief. I took a sneak peek at the next few days… more about the stages of grief.

I started journaling and realized that I’ve been experiencing grief this whole year. Obviously the recent grief related to the accident has been more powerful, but denial, anger, bargaining, depression… these emotions have been rampant in 2020. I have even had moments of acceptance, but grief – like recovery – isn’t linear, and I find myself oscillating between all of the stages of grief over and over again.

In my running/fitness challenge group this month we are doing a daily “I am grateful” pledge. Our coach is taking it one step further and each day she “throws away” something negative from the year, replacing it with gratitude. I loved this idea and decided to do it myself. This reminds me of grief and acceptance, or grief and recovery. Grief being the negative things and acceptance or recovery being the gratefulness. Maybe I will share my list at the end of the month… I would love to hear if anyone else does this, too.

The most important takeaway for me in learning about grief through internet searches and reading my meditations is that each stage is normal, healthy and can be necessary to reach the point of acceptance or recovery. A lot of us try to push away any negative emotions but they truly can be part of our growth. I know that I have grown a lot this year. It has been a difficult year, but I have tried to find the silver linings in each trying situation.

I hope that if this year has had you grieving a lot that you know that it is okay. I hope that you are able to work through that grief, giving yourself as much time as you need in each stage, and accepting that it is okay to go back and forth from one stage to another. I hope that for you and for me we eventually find acceptance and peace. I have hope for better things on the horizon.