It’s been a busy few weeks with the virtual and in-person launches of my new book, Catch Me When I Fall: Poems of Mother Loss and Healing. My heart is full of gratitude for all of you who came to one of these events and for everyone’s continued support.
As I was reflecting on the things I’ve learned on my grief journey in preparation for my book launches, I came up with nine key revelations on navigating loss. These are not in any order of priority, but hopefully, you’ll find them helpful. In future newsletters, I’ll dive a bit deeper into each one and offer some tips and practices on each.
- How we grieve is not “one-size-fits all”. Our grief journeys, how long they take to navigate, and what is needed to help us heal from loss is unique to each person. We each must each forge our path.
- Our relationships with the people we love don’t have to end when they die, they just change form. Love is such a powerful healing force that even though a physical relationship with someone we love ends, our relationship doesn’t have to. It just changes form.
- The reason we are here on earth is to learn how to love. Our primary purpose for being on earth is to learn how to extend kindness and compassion to ourselves and to others. Love is the glue that keeps us connected on this earth with those we love and to those we’ve loved and lost in the next world.
- Our losses may serve as a catalyst to deepen our capacity to carve an even bigger space for love. One of the potential gifts of losing someone we love is it can help us be more present to those we care about, to our spiritual connection, to humanity and the world around us.
- Our greatest teachers may end up being those we least expect! Stay open to unlikely messengers!
- There is collateral beauty in loss. We cannot know joy unless we’ve known sorrow and we cannot experience true joy if we haven’t known pain.
- It’s never too late to heal our most pivotal relationships. The power of love for another human being enables us to heal and transform even our most difficult relationships if we keep our hearts open.
- Grief is always transformational. We are not the same person coming out of our grief journeys as we were going in. It is our choice whether we allow it to make us better or make us bitter.
- Sometimes, we have to lose something or someone we love to fully become our most authentic self. The loss of what we hold most dear may be a catalyst to help us blossom into who we were meant to be.
As you reflect on what you’ve learned from you experiences of loss, I’ve provided some questions which may help you. Please click here in the resource tab and download the pdf.
Blessings on your journey,
…Donna
Download the PDF: Questions for Reflection on the Transformative Power of Grief
I experienced grief comes a long ocean wave that I couldn’t get around. When the wave, I learned to let it wash over me. I found that accepting the wave brought me close to my wife—she was very nearly present—as opposed to the frustration that came with trying to avoid it.