Grief. Am I doing it right?

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Grief is unpredictable. It opens up the darkest parts of your soul. The parts you didn’t even expect to have.

Grief is messy. It doesn’t follow any specific rules, maps, stages… It doesn’t end with the end of the first year. Sometimes much faster, sometimes it doesn’t end at all. It changes its character rather…

It often takes you by surprise; chokes you by your throat when you least expected it. Sometimes pretends that it is gone for good only to return with a bigger strength like the maverick wave, and completely sweeps you away.

Grief is sneaky. You never know what brings it on; a smell, a sound, a familiar phrase, a particular day in the calendar, and everything changes in a second. The heaviness and darkness come as a black cloud and you are lost in your own head again. You keep thinking, changing the past, changing the outcome of that last conversation you had with THEM, changing your entire family history to make it better, more acceptable, guilt free…

Your friends don’t call you much. A few that call asking “how are you doing” don’t even wait for your answer. They switch immediately to their own pain. You don’t want to hear about their pain. You have enough of your own. You don’t want to hear: “I know how you feel” because they don’t! You don’t want to hear that some people have it even worse and there is so much pain in the world because you don’t give a damn right now. It doesn’t make you feel any better…

You hear: “if there is anything I can do for you let me know” and you get angry. If you knew what you could do, you would have done it yourself! You have no idea. You are tired of thinking, so tired in fact…

Grief is unpredictable. It opens up the darkest parts of your soul. The parts you didn’t even expect to have. The parts that seemingly have nothing to do with your grief. It pushes you deeper and deeper into the night and forces you to deal with your shadows, either you want it or not.

And you ask yourself: what’s wrong with me? Why can I not get over it? What am I doing wrong?
NOTHING.
There are no rules for grief to follow. Forget the “five stages of grief” and everything you have heard before. Those are just some words, the labels for your feelings to help you to understand, to see some normality in your madness.

You have to do it your way and as long as you need. There is no end to it until you say there is. And if your grief comes in the form of relief or laughter, or… fill in the blanks… that’s good too. It is your way and YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT.
By Eva Sadowski

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