So I feel like I’m at this crossroad with my grief journey. I’ve been thinking a lot of about how I am doing today compared to where I was 6,7,8 or 9 years ago. When I was struggling to navigate my way through this horrific loss of my daughter. Within a few years after Brittany died I struggled to even look at anything of hers yet I’d spend hours longing for her while looking at her pictures on the wall. I would basically pine for her. I wanted to feel her hug again, I wanted to hear her voice again – her laugh. I wanted that so badly that I couldn’t see my way to the future without her.

Truly I did not want to go on. I struggled with eating, breathing and sleeping. Nothing made sense to me anymore. Everything I knew and felt was ripped from my heart and while a faithful person, I hung on to God’s word that I would see her again. For me that time couldn’t come soon enough.

Then life happened and I began to feel alive again. Surprisingly I began to feel moments of joy mixed with sadness. As time moved on the moments of joy began to overcome the moments of sadness. I began to allow people in my life again. I began to trust again that life could have some purpose.

So the crossroad today is that while trying to living a life that honors my daughter and hopefully help others, I am struggling with thinking about her. I avoid it now at all costs so I don’t have to feel that pain anymore. That pain that made it hard to breathe to sleep to eat isn’t something I want to feel anymore. Yet when I let it in, I begin to struggle with swallowing as my throat feels like it’s going to close up. Tears begin to well up in my eyes and my chest begins to hurt. I fight it with all of my might. I don’t want to feel it anymore. I’m tired of it.

I’ve grown very weary of grief. I’m tired of the struggle. It’s a full time job that I don’t want anymore. But the reality is I don’t have a choice. It happened to me. I can’t make it go away. No matter how hard I try, grief continues and pursues me with reckless abandon until I am slain with grief. I don’t like it. In fact, I hate it. It makes me angry still today. I’m tired of battling it.

I find with each phase of my journey I have to re-invent what my response is to the process. What used to work for me doesn’t work anymore. The problem is I had a lot of help getting to where I am today. Many authors and a few counselors and groups helped me mold my journey. I honestly did not think I needed that help anymore. I figured I knew it all. What I know to be true is the struggle with grief continues throughout our whole life and it comes in phases that will require work. That work will be different and may be different from what you’ve ever seen before.

I find that now I will need to do some difficult work to figure out where I go from here. What is it that I need to learn now? I’m not sure, but I need to do something and because I feel like my journey is at a crossroad that needs to mature into a different phase. I need to feed my soul with God’s word and of those authors who have gone before me and are still continuing to evolve their journey.

Those of us who have accepted this purpose have to continue our own internal work to evolve and grow into what our purpose is for this time in our lives. I don’t believe it is to stay the same but rather to evolve and grow as you do in your own life. I’m glad that I have been open to see that the change needs to happen and that I am willing to understand the gravity if I don’t. So hopefully in the coming weeks and months, the writing will become more clear and will offer some hope to some who are open to receive it.

until next time

M