I can recall when I first started to think about grief in a more expansive way. Initially, I thought grief was reserved for issues of death and loss. As I learned and experienced more, I began to understand grief as a normal response to less obvious events, such as transitions, breakups, the ending of friendships, the launching of children, etc. Now, I see grief all around me, all the time.
We tend to associate grief with things like:
Death
Loss
Illness
We may also experience grief in response to:
A divorce or breakup
The end of a friendship
A transition like graduating, moving, or launching children
If we let it, grief can be a unique and powerful teacher. It can illuminate the fleeting nature of what we once took for granted. It can show us, over and over, what we hold most dear. It can remind us to sit longer with what we have or move more quickly toward what we are still looking for.
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