November is upon us and again I enter another month of what I call the dark days. November is tough for me because it’s the beginning of the holiday season. When families come together and celebrate families. A time to be grateful for our country and its founding fathers and a time to be thankful we are still here to see the wonders of what we have been able to live through and survive as a country.
Now I can link you to several blogs about the horrific conditions in some other countries where things are horribly worse. But this blog is about grief, gratitude, blessings in the midst of that. So I am very mindful that there are much worse things than what I have experienced. But again that is not what this blog is about. It’s about life-changing, life-altering devastation. And the means by which you can and will survive it.
It is also about how you can help someone else in need. Someone who has suffered a loss that has changed them, changed their life – and it’s our job to validate that change and speak to that change in a way that is not disrespectful of their loss. It has always been my goal from the beginning of this blog that it would be of help to someone. Whether it be the person who has lost or the support system who is helping them move through the process of grief.
The holidays are a very hard time for us grievers. I find I get very melancholy this time of year. I get moody and sometimes withdrawn because I don’t want to impose my grief onto others. But for me November is a tough month. It comes on the heels of October, the month of her death and it ends on her birthday. Sigh. She would be turning 22 on this November 30th. It’s hard for me to some days imagine what she would look like now. How much more beautiful she would have become had her light not been snuffed out by Epilepsy.
So if I seem a little distant – do not worry. It’s normal this time of year for me to take a step back and spend time alone. It’s how I process such a loss as mine. The emptiness in my heart, forever void and painfully exists to remind me of what a great woman I know she would have become and the great young woman she was. God gave me such a gift and I am forever grateful for his blessing called Brittany.
until next time
m
Unimaginable Grief Unexpected Blessings 
I don’t know what it is about our culture that makes us feel like we have to apologize for our grief, for feeling our losses. Some treat hardships like a competition, and the problem is that no matter how devastating our personal sadness is, there is always someone who had it worse (on paper). “Oh, you lost your husband? What about the woman who lost her husband and her 18 kids in the freak merry-go-round accident?” It’s obnoxious as it is false – as if we’re going to say, “Oh, someone had even worse luck than me – my pain is gone!”
I look at the pic of Brittany you put in this post and I can get just a glimpse of her beautiful spirit from her expression. I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around even a hint of what it feels like to have a loss like that. So what if someone else may have theoretically had it worse when they lost their entire family and much of their good china in the Great Mutant Crocodile Massacre of 1902 – grief can’t be quantified, and no one who is trying to keep score should force their judgments on you.
I agree Mary – it does take a different perspective to understand the dynamics behind grief and how it changes our thinking, our living and our breathing. Everyone’s grief is uniquely their own and it cannot be measured by how much or how long – only that it has happened. And it has changed their lives forever.