THE HONEST PERSPECTIVE | WEEKLY PROMPT - GRIEF
Living through Grief
Allowing space for grief, joy and gratitude to coexist over time
Allowing death and grief to coexist with life and joyful living is not something that everyone can imagine; even fewer can embrace it. I have done both — but it wasn’t easy. And I didn’t do it alone.
While I was always referred to by my elders as an “old soul,” it wasn’t until I experienced the depths of aching grief that I really embraced being an old soul, in a positive and useful way.
My thirst for learning about grief and grieving practices went far beyond the teachings of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross that I studied in college. The first time I read her book on the stages of grief as a college student studying Death, Dying and Suicide at UCLA, as a psychology major, my curiosity was more academic than personal.
By the time I experienced grief myself, I was able to take my more academic experience and apply it to real life. But even then, my thirst was unquenched. I remember talking with clergy about what I was going through; I was told that I had “a good handle on it,” for someone my age. And then I was sent off to do more reading to answer some of my questions. I read a lot. I talked a lot. I didn’t write. I listened to…
