Grief is a Human Condition,
not a medical one.
Grief is something you ‘get over.’
Grief is something you have to heal from.
Grief is something you must overcome.
I disagree.
While the health care professions seem to see grief as something that automatically requires medication and therapy, I see it more as something we have to learn. Something we take control of. Something we own.
(Disclaimer: Your medical and mental health needs are your responsibility. You must make the best decisions for you based on your own personal situation. None of the information here is intended to replace appropriate and necessary treatment by a qualified medical professional.)
I believe that grief is something we have to feel our way through.
It hurts. It’s supposed to hurt.
The hurt is equal to the loss.
If we didn’t care so much, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
But the pain never goes away. It never lessens. It never gets better.
We just get better at holding it.
If I asked you to wear a backpack filled with 100 pounds, 24/7, you wouldn’t last very long.
But if I ask you to wear an empty backpack for the next 24 hours, and then I put a half pound weight in it and ask you to carry that around for a few days. And then add another half pound, and another, every few days, you would get pretty good at lugging that weight around.
And if I told you that the better you get at carrying the backpack, as it becomes fully loaded, the more often you could put it down and take a break, you’d start to think that this was possible.
Down the road, you know the backpack is always there. You know you have to keep it. You know you have to carry it around once in a while. You know it’s hard to do. But you also know you can do it.
The backpack is your heart. Love and happiness fill it, but are weightless as they float within it.
When the love and happiness are replaced with loss and despair, you’ve suddenly got a hundred pound weight to carry.
The hundred pounds sits there, going nowhere, and you have to figure out how to live with it.
Which means being able to pick it up, carry it around, move it out of the way.
Ignoring it, pretending it isn’t there, throwing a blanket over it – none of these things will change the fact that, at some point, you have to pick that shit up!
It seems such an impossible task. And not one we want to do. Not something we asked for.
But when tackled a little at a time, chipped away at, and mastered in small, consistent, focused stages, we get stronger, better at carrying the load.
Until it looks like we’re carrying that bag effortlessly.
Until it doesn’t weigh us down. It doesn’t get in the way.
We can put it down and take a break.
We’re in charge of the load. We control how much it gets in the way. We learn to manage it.
The process hurts. Nothing about this is fun. But being alive means having a heart. And having a heart means risking having it broken.
We can heal our heart, but it will always have a scar.
It will work again, just as strong as before – in fact, likely better, now that we know how to treat it well. But it will always carry the marks of having been hurt.
Grief becomes a part of us. It is the cost of loving.
It is not something to be hidden away, covered up, forgotten. It is the other half of love.
And when held deep in our souls with a true appreciation for its value, it makes us better people. It adds depth to our character. It teaches us more about love than love ever can.
It’s what makes life so precious.
Dragonfly You 
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