Nobody Teaches You How To Deal With Grief

“Grief is such a strange thing. Sometimes it seems to be gone entirely, but then one smell or sound or memory and it’s as if it was waiting there, in the shadows, until you noticed it following you.” – Natalie Whipple, House of Ivy & Sorrow

Grief, it’s a very painful and overwhelming emotion to feel, yet an essential and fundamental part for growth as a person. We all deal with it, it does not discriminate. Grief comes in many forms – from losing a loved one, whether they are alive or taken from the heavens above, to not landing your dream job, financial hardship, or a health issue.

Nobody teaches you how to deal with grief because dealing with grief is something that cannot be taught, because not a single one of us are the same. There’s no rule book or guidelines. We all have our own coping mechanisms. We all deal with it in different ways whether it be shutting yourself off from the world, screaming, crying and cursing until your lungs burn and your bones ache, to meditating or writing, or drinking, self medicating, fucking or sweating the pain away. How yourself deals with grief is no ones business but your own. And not one person has the right to tell you how you should express yourself whilst grieving or what you’re feeling isn’t valid enough, no matter how little or big they think the situation you’re going through is. The only people who think there is a time limit for grief have never truly lost a piece of their heart.

Grieving IS NOT a sign of weakness. Grief is tremendous but love trumps it, always. You’ve grieved because you have loved with all of your beating heart. Grief is all the love you want to give, but cannot. And while you cannot give your love to that particular person or thing, give extra love to yourself. Be kinder to yourself. Don’t be impatient with the process of healing, there are many emotions to go through and steps to be taken. It is a slow process, and it may seem it’s impossible to get through but the feeling does lessen over time.

Life is relentless, there’s no timeout, it goes on and so must you. Day by day, the sun will rise again and so will you, you will put one foot in front of the other and there will be some days where you’ll wonder how you even made it through the day before, but you did, and you should be proud, you put on your armor and fought through another day and didn’t give up even though you felt the whole world was on your shoulders. The key is to keep going, keep waking up the next day, keep striving for your own wellbeing. Channel all your pain into something that makes you happy. You will find over time you WILL start to feel better. But don’t beat yourself over the days where a wave comes crashing out of nowhere and you feel like you’re back drowning in sorrow again because as long as there was pure love and the greatest memories, you truly haven’t lost and no matter how hard you try, sometimes in life, some things or people cannot be fixed or forgotten, they can only be carried.