The Truth about Grief

Once you experience a heart-wrenchingly painful loss that hits you to your core, the grief never leaves your side. Grief can hit at any point in your life at the most unexpected of times, but it definitely gets easier. Sometimes it’ll break your heart all over again and sometimes you’ll smile at the memories–or even laugh, you will have joy again.

Grief is not something you get over, it’s something you go through. It’s not an obstacle in your way, it’s a part of your journey.

The first year after losing a parent, or a parental-figure, is the hardest. Holidays, birthdays, any significant days that you want to share are going to be hard. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, but I will say it does get easier.

If you’re in the thick of it, your number one priority is taking care of yourself during this time. Make sure you are eating, hydrating, and getting sleep. Likewise, if you know someone who is going through grief for the first time, check in on them once in a while.

Something that really helped me during my first year of grief was looking at it in a different light. It’s not about moving on from the loss, it’s about finding ways to move forward in life while allowing yourself to feel the loss and continue to grow. It’s about trying to live life to the fullest, the way they would’ve wanted you to keep on living.

All the lessons, all the memories, and all the good things stay with you and that eventually is greater than the grief itself.

One of the lectures my father gave me turned out to be one of my greatest lessons. I like to call it “Productive Grieving.” I used to watch TV all day, every day as a kid and he’d either say, “Don’t watch too much TV or your eyes will turn square” (LOL) or he’d say, “do something productive.”

When I say productivity, I don’t mean throwing yourself into work or your career or bottling up your emotions. Productive grieving is taking the time during your grief to work on yourself–journal, exercise, pray, meditate, etc. Do things that center you and bring a little light in your life. Do things even when it’s difficult, even if you don’t want to get up and do the work because in the long run, little by little, you’ll be able to breathe easier and pick yourself up.

For example, we all know exercising is good for us, but in the moment, sometimes lying in bed sounds more appealing, but in order to find ways to move forward during the grief, sometimes you gotta go through the hard motions to see the new days and when you finally end up doing it, you feel a little lighter, and a little better.

Productive Grieving can look like:

• sitting outside, doing absolutely nothing, but feeling the sun on your skin and breathing in the fresh air (even if it’s cold outside)
• going for a nature walk
• listening to soothing music
• drawing, painting, coloring–doing things with your hands like taking a ceramics class
• working on a passion project
• and so much more…

Unproductive Grieving is:

• neglecting yourself and your basic needs
• numbing yourself to the hurt with anything in excess that are potentially addictive or harmful activities to your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, such as excessive substance, shopping, binge-eating, or other binging, etc.
• throwing yourself into work to avoid feeling vulnerable
• shoving your emotions into a box to deal with it “later”

In the end, take it day by day. Go easy on yourself. If all you wanna do is lay down and not think about anything, that’s ok too. Just know that doing the hard work is the only way forward.

I hope this helps. 🤍

rebeccanneuy