November has arrived…and with it a world of reminders to live well. This month is my mother’s death anniversary, reminding me of how dark my life had been once, and how I had fallen to the pit of the bottom, wondering if I would ever live again. If you have lost someone in your life, you know exactly what I mean. Through dedicating a lot of my writing to her, did I learn to live again, and to find my light. For a long time, I simply gave up because the pain was much too hard to endure. People were telling me how to grieve and that it shouldn’t take that long. But these were people who also had a mother in their life and knew nothing about my pain.
I want to remind you…grieving is your own process. Take as long as you need to and there is not one single word in the English vocabulary that when spoken, will take away the pain. That pain is inside you and it will be reminded no matter how long time goes on. You live with it. Through being gentle with yourself and slowly learning how your own healing works, you can find the way to living again.
I remembered after my mother died, I wrote short little notes to myself and included her name in there, so that she could see that I was trying somehow to live again. If it snowed, if it rained, if I smiled, if I laughed…I included it all and it was how I learned how to handle my grief. No one held my hand for me, no one told me it was going to be fair…because no one can do that for you but yourself.
Take the time to truly process everything as it comes and remind yourself that you are not alone. Through the chapters written, you can find that you have many who share the same pain and loss, but we just handle it in a different way. Some are more louder in their yearning and some are more silent, but either way, both are learning how to process their loss, their way. 