Grief bites – let it

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Grief is a funny old thing.  There are hundreds of books out there that ‘deal’ with grief but you never know exactly how it’ll affect you until you lose someone.

So many emotions become tangled in the net that is grief.  Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching sadness, guilt, anger, loneliness – your whole world turned inside out, upside down, flat and grey.

Grief is a natural part of life.  It means that you love.  If we love with true vulnerability we must embrace grief as it is inevitable that we will experience loss.  It’s how we grow and learn to celebrate life.

Death is something I learnt about at a very young age, although I doubt I really gripped the full implication until later in life.  Growing up on a farm we saw death fairly often and experienced grief at the loss of beloved pets.  Grandparents passed away when I was a young child, my grandfather when I was only nine was the last and I knew he wouldn’t return from his overseas trip when he left.  I just knew.

As a teenager I grieved for the loss of a close friend, someone who ended his own life.  The experience resonates to this day, grief being one small part of a complexity of lessons I chose to take from it.

Grief hit me harder in my twenties with the loss of something far less tangible – my ability to have children.  I was caught in the grief over a life lost, or denied, the life I always thought I’d live as my right and purpose.  When I lost the final two embryos from our very last attempt at IVF, I sank into the depths of grief and its cohort depression.

The depression lasted almost 10 years.  It was my way of grieving.  It gave me time to process.  I chose it.  Maybe not consciously but on some level my body knew that I needed the time to grieve and process and work out that I had an identity and purpose without having those lost children in my life.

I wrote a letter to my unborn child.  I forgave her for not coming into my life this time, for giving me so much pain.  I forgave her a hundred things and as I did, I started to move on.  The fog of grief thinned, the depression parted ever so slightly and the light began to shine brighter again.

In the past two years I’ve experienced the grief of losing both my father and my beloved mother-in-law.  My husband’s father had already passed 15 years ago while I was still mired in my own grief – a double-whammy.  But the impact of the loss of both a father and mother in recent years has been very different, more so from the experience of having worked through that all embracing grief of childlessness.

I’ve felt the sadness of their passing no less keenly but midst the sadness is understanding and joy.  Celebrating the lives of those who have gone on, knowing I love them no less deeply now that they’re not physically here and that their love for me is just as strong – these are the things that bring joy along with the sadness.

Grief comes in waves, in many layers of emotions.  I’ve found the secret is to let them come.  You’ll experience them regardless but in consciously accepting and embracing them, celebrating the amazing gifts I’ve been given through loving these people, the grief is softer.

It can be constructive – a time to reflect on your own life and what you want from it.  Realising how you want to feel and choosing  to make change so you feel however it is you want to feel, every day, can be a life-changing consequence of experiencing loss and grief.

I’m thankful for grief.  It means I love deeply, passionately, from a place of vulnerability because it’s worth it.  The gifts are tremendous.