5 Steps To Healing After A Big Loss

To grieve, you need to feel what you need to heal.

A couple of months ago, I looked at my friends and said: “I have never really lost anything.” I realized I had never had to grieve a devastating loss that knocked me off my own two feet.

Little did I know the hit that was coming (aka, multiple hits.)

I really couldn’t recall a time when I had a loss that punched me in the gut, that sent me to straight to the pit of the grieving process. My friends talked about losing loved ones, and how this absolutely wrecked them. I stared at them in sympathy, because I couldn’t quite understand the feeling.

BUT THEN THE RUG GOT SWEPT OUT FROM UNDERNEATH ME.

The feeling of loss trickled into my life, with one heartbreak after another. My boyfriend and I of three and a half years broke up. My grandma passed away. And a huge family crisis went down, where I lost the normalcy of what I was used to for my whole life. This happened all in three months.

In a short amount of time, I experienced loss in all shapes and sizes. The loss of a loved one, the loss of a close relationship, and the loss of normalcy.

I WAS NOT THE SAME ASHLEY.

Slowly but surely, I started to not recognize my life. It didn’t look like mine anymore. And with that, I started to not recognize myself.