Celebrating Grief, or Tarnishing the Magic Dust?

        Today was a rather heavy day, for me, personally.  Tomorrow, too.  Since the Project was founded on the premise of helping others realize they aren't alone, I felt like perhaps I should share a bit of my thoughts and feelings, in the hope that it might help someone out there, somehow.

        This was from a post I made on one of my own, personal, social media timelines:

"Today, I'm choosing to celebrate certain kinds of grief. Why, you ask? Because I'm beginning to understand that there are kinds of grief worth having, and losses that make us more for the having had someone, or something, in our lives worth grieving, even when it is a painful, difficult process."

        I tend to deal with my emotional states by working through them individually, in small bites, rather than trying to tackle the whole thing at once.  My life has given me plenty of chances to have myriad emotions, and I'm not really comfortable with them, when they are particularly strong.  One of these emotions - or processes, really - is grief.  It's a particularly tricky one, too.  I really have to take it in moments, now and again, to really handle it properly (i.e., in a way that still leaves me functional).

        Grief is one of those things that adult humans would be very rare to have never experienced by the time they get to that adult state.  It is a very natural thing, and its effects can range from something as relatively simple as having lost a favorite teddy bear; to the loss of a career path, physical/mental capacity, or romantic relationship; to even the death of a family member, or other loved one.  There is a series of processing steps, or "stages of grief", outlined by psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, which, after having been taught them, they have helped me through a number of such experiences.

Actually, if I'm going to be honest, I should really say,

"have been helping me through a number of such experiences."

Because, really, sometimes grief can be a lifelong process (sorry to say).  

       But anyway...

        Humans tend to shrink from grief.  We actually tend to try to avoid anything that is negative, hurts us, or causes us to do something we don't want to do, in general.  "I just can't get myself to ___, and I don't know why.  I just find myself not getting it done."  Sound familiar?  Yup... we tend to avoid things when we're hurt and pull in, in order to just curl up inside and deal with the hurt, within us.

        Grief is really, no different.  Often, though not always - and I'm guilty of this sometimes, myself - we push the grief away, down, aside...wherever we send it... and try to ignore that it is there, while we work on pretending our lives are normal and we aren't falling apart inside.  While it's important to keep things running as much as we can, especially when there are children or other such things involved, it is vital that we allow ourselves the time and space to properly sort through and heal our wounds.  That often requires the help of someone we can trust to listen and be a sounding board, which can mean a friend, family member, or even professional therapist, who can help guide us through the steps required to face and handle the process.

        But what about the quote of the post I made?  "Today, I'm choosing to celebrate certain kinds of grief. Why, you ask? Because I'm beginning to understand that there are kinds of grief worth having, and losses that make us more for the having had someone, or something, in our lives worth grieving, even when it is a painful, difficult process."  How can we possibly celebrate something that can hurt so, blasted much?

        Most of my worst, most devastating sources of my grief have been from people who have come into my life, and then in some form, left it.  Of course, most recently, much of my grief has come from my health issues, mental and physical, and the consequences and other things that these situations have created in my life.  I have lost a lot of my former functioning, and it has been, at times, emotionally-crushing to my very core.  One of the worst facets of it, is that I can make progress that seems further than I've ever been, but then one, little thing happens, and it all comes crashing backwards.  This summer, for instance, we worked slowly up, a few steps more every time, until we went from 10 minute walks in the spring, to literally scaling a mountain!  And in less than 7 days I'd gone from achieving the greatest moment of my life, physically...to losing it all again, simply because I moved the wrong way in a chair!

        I'm typically pretty good about handling griefs. I try to acknowledge anniversaries with small memorials that allow my heart to focus on a grief for a day or two, then when it has passed, I let it go for a while.  Is this the best way to handle it?  I don't know.  I have a rather large collection of anniversaries and memorials through which I cycle...but perhaps the compartmentalization allows me to face them in their own space, which permits me to face them fully, but not in such a way that I am completely overcome, all the time.  It's only when I'm tired, worn out, in pain, or in some, other way my resiliency is reduced, that I can't let things simply bounce off.  Hard to bounce off a soft surface.

You're right...I've still not answered the question.

What about grief is worth celebrating?

        I believe that if we face our lives as a kind of educational process - not the kind that makes you roll your eyes, grit your teeth and resist with all your might to keep from being sent to detention; but the kind that you welcome with arms, mind and heart wide open - the things we can learn, from our experiences, as well as the learning process itself, can be both fascinating and illuminating. In the process of eventually realizing pure truth, we learn how to realize true peace. 

        Perhaps what I'm getting at, is that I've learned that the most powerful of all my experiences in my life have been the most purifying, and the most beautiful. Even the darkest, deepest shades of night within my heart have served a purpose, and have made the bright and shining things to be that much more brilliant!  How could I possibly wish to not be as effective at what I love to do, if I don't have the capacity to do it, simply because I've hidden myself from life?  Of course, one could argue that agoraphobia is kind of an odd counterbalance for this logic...but hey, life is messy!

        Our nature, as humans, is to keep ourselves hidden within the things that give us comfort.  Therefore, life must have a way of forcing us to overcome ourselves, and inadvertently become more of our true potential, regardless of what we think we want!  And that comes with a price.  And that price often comes in the form of some kind of loss...and in that loss, comes grief.  Grief is the soul's way of guiding us to our true selves, whether we want to go, or not!  And if we accept something magical in our lives, then we must also accept that the magic may end, fade, or dissipate, leaving us standing there in our rags, barefooted, with nothing but a few, fading sparkles of shining dust in its wake.  But oh, my, what that magic can do!

We dream of the magic...so we must accept its life span.

        So... yeah.  That's that.  Sometimes one might have to wonder how much of this is all, complete bunk.  But hey, clearly you're still reading it, so either you're trying to find something wrong with it, or you're trying to find in it, something right.  Either way...here it is.

        Better days ahead, my friends!