Grief Awareness - August is National Grief Awareness Month and August 30th is a day set aside to recognize and bring awareness to the grief experience.
What does grief do to us? What is the benefit of “being aware” of grief?
I will tell you that as someone who has grown up with death in my peripheral at nearly all times, death has existed for me as a gift of perspective and, at other times, a source of anxiety.
The grief experience makes the world stand still while also showing us that indeed, the world doesn’t stop for everyone else. Perspective hits over and over. Gratitude hits, emptiness hits, we need to seize every moment but ordinary moments are the ones that are the sweetest, grief is everything – all of it. Happiness, laughter, agony and misery.
Grief becomes a rainbow of feelings, memories, and experiences that illuminates so much in spite of the darkened world.
When we experience a death, eventually we realize others have gone through this, too. Maybe the person we just walked by. Perhaps they have also walked this path of grief. Maybe they know, maybe so many people know and we just need to offer that kindness.
Grief helps us see beyond ourselves into the invisible pain others may carry.
With time, we begin to feel and know that they are still with us. We look for signs and get them. We feel their spirit in the wind, their smile in the beauty of a moment, their familiar and welcomed presence in a bird just outside the window.
“Grief also makes us someone who talks to butterflies.” - @grieftogloriousunfolding
It doesn’t end. Everyone thinks they will want grief to end, but then the realization hits that if our grief ends, our memories, feelings, and connections to our loved one would be void. And that emptiness is something no one who has loved someone wants or could comprehend. What that means is …
Grief is a remaining connection to the people we love.
When we understand grief, we understand that it isn’t something we wish away when it’s all that we have left. So, our awareness of what it is, what it gives to us, and how it exists as a connection not only amongst the living but amongst the dead, our awareness of grief makes it precious and far more beautiful than we would have expected.
An awareness of grief, is a shared awareness of our beautiful, tragic, and resilient humanity. Grief is nothing to be ashamed of, it is the mark of love, of suffering, of what matters most - people.
And being aware of all of that, can change how we live for the better.
