Hello friends,
Today I will explore a topic very near and dear to my heart, and what ultimately has shaped who I am as a person and a therapist.
I will never forget the day it happened. I had just taken my grandmother’s dog for a walk at the beach and was arriving back at her house to drop him off. As I walked up to the garage, I could see the look in my grandfather’s eyes. Something was wrong. My nana, as we call her, asked me to come inside and sit down. She looked visibly shaken and I could see she was having a hard time getting the words out so I became alarmed and shouted, “Just tell me!” And then the words that would change the entire course of my life came. “It’s your brothers Ang… They’re dead. They died in a car crash”. I remember not believing it for those first few seconds and asking to make sure, “Both of them?”. Immediately, I ran outside to the lawn and dropped to my knees, screaming up at the sky with tears running down my face. From that moment on, my life was never the same.
Make no mistake about it, grief can literally bring you to your knees, begging for mercy. The pain rips a hole through your very core and feels as if it will kill you. The knowledge that you will never, ever see that person again and the deep longing as a result is like living every moment in your worst nightmare. The idea of living without the person who has died is at first unimaginable. There are many ways that people die and our relationships with the person who has died can be just as varied. But, for most, the experience of losing a loved one affects you deeply in one way or another. For example, the loss of a child or a life-long spouse can be exceptionally traumatic and will entail many layers of grief, ranging from dealing with the raw feelings to having to figure out a new purpose in life without the one who has died. For others, the loss may have been expected such as in the case of an older grandparent but nonetheless, the loss can still have a deeply significant effect on a person’s life.
Most of us live totally unaware of this fact of life until it touches our lives in some way. We know intellectually that death happens but unless you have a close encounter with death in some way, we tend to live as if we are immune to it’s reality. Experiencing my brothers’ deaths at the beginning of my early adulthood years, shaped my life to the degree that I would most likely be a completely different person had it not occurred. Everyone’s grief journey is different but for me, the first few years were spent in deep despair and a lot of therapy. Deep loss has the potential to make you face yourself and your life like nothing else can. There is also the likely possibility that it will bring up any previous losses you endured your life. Sadness, crying, longing, depression, despair, lack of motivation, confusion, anger, guilt, disturbances in your eating and sleeping and many other factors are all normal aspects of grief, especially in the beginning. As time moves on, the acuteness of these symptoms may begin to wane, giving rise to existential questioning and a longing to understand the loss and how to move forward in your life.
The journey through grief is long and hard but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The question, “Why am I here?” is taken to a new level if you are ready to dig deep. One of the harsh realities to come to terms with after losing a loved one is that life goes on, whether you want it to or not. It becomes your task at some point, to find a way to live despite the cold, hard fact of death. I remember grappling with having trust in life given that I had now seen it’s most awful, terrible, ugly side. I resented Life but ultimately it was this understanding of Life that led me to live with greater love, purpose and appreciation. At the most fundamental level, everything I do now in life is a tribute to my brothers. It took me 20 years of deep introspection and spiritual seeking to come to this place and it is why I want to help others along in their grief journey.
Finally, grief is not limited to the experience of losing a loved one. In fact, the term “bereavement” refers specifically to the state you are in after the death of a loved one while grief can be experienced after other events such as a divorce, loss of a job, personal illness or brush with death, significant financial loss, moving to a new area or any other experience that shakes your sense of identity and security. If you are reading this now because you have experienced a deep loss, please know you are not alone. While you will never be able to go back in time to your life before the loss occurred, there is always something to live for. Like it or not, you have the rest of your life to live and you deserve to make the most of it.
If you are ready to take the step towards beginning grief counseling, please contact me and I am happy to offer a free 15 minute consultation to address any questions you may have about the counseling process or to book your first session.
Next blog post: Why Do People Avoid Getting Therapy?
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The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
~Mary Oliver