March 30-day Challenge: Grief

While we live in a culture that wishes to hide from and bypass grief, I've been forced to recognize this excruciating experience can be a powerful teacher. So for this month, I'm doubling down.

February was a mulligan. While I thought I had the time and space to embrace the skills I learned from the Flow Research Collective, life had a different plan. Illness. Tragedy. Chaos. I hate making excuses, so I won't make one. I over-committed and under-delivered. Yes, life threw a bunch of curve balls, but I could have been more resourceful in how I knocked them out of the park.

So February was a mulligan, but March will be different.

This month, I'm focusing on grief. I know what you're thinking. What an odd topic to pick? Who would focus on such a painful facet of life instead of picking something positive or inspirational.

I've learned a lot about grief these past few months, but I'm nowhere close to having it figured out. Grief is a excruciating experience, but also a powerful teacher.

I won't go into the details because it's not my story to tell. However, someone very close to me lost a soul mate. To say that life will never be the same is an understatement. Months after the tragic loss, the wound feels as piercing as the day it happened.

I have found myself coming to grips with my bizarre expectations around what grief is and what would "should" do with it. Maybe it was the way I was raised or the culture I was born into, but I found myself thinking insane thoughts. Things like "well if I just force myself to face it now, I can get through all my crying in a few weeks." I tried it, and actually thought it might have worked. How naive. Grief doesn't work that way. None of it worked the way I thought it did.

I was recommended the book Bearing the Unbearable by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. To say it's been a gut punch is an understatement. Reading story after story of people going through loss impacted me in a profound way. I found myself sobbing over and over again, while gaining a deeper understanding of the myriad of ways grief can be experienced.

I have finished the book once, but I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. This month, I'm reading it again to sit with the stories and the advice shared throughout. Having visited the person close to me, I witnessed first hand what the aftermath of loss does to a person. No platitudes or "look on the bright side" thinking will help. This is a hard and complex journey.

I don't think I'll have much in the way of sharing what I experience at the end of my 30-day challenge. However, I highly recommend the book if you (or someone you know) is battling with grief.