Grief, Healing And The One To Two Year Myth

[sunstreet]

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/grief-healing-and-the-one-to-two-year-myth/

I wanted to share this link with you all. It is my belief that our loss is a life-long healing process. It is not something that we find closure to or an end to, it is my belief that we can find hope in life again and a desire to live it again, and even find joy again and the amount of time we need is ultimately a non-issue for the time we need is just that time without a definitive amount...it just is...these are my thoughts and beliefs.....

Blessings and Courage, Carol Ann

[MartyT]

Thank you, Carol Ann, for finding and sharing this outstanding article with all of us. Truly, working our way through grief is a cumulative, lifelong process, and not a single task to be completed in six or nine or twelve months, or in any other arbitrary chunk of time.

I'd like to add this piece of wisdom from Elizabeth Harper Neeld:

One of the creative and victorious outcomes researchers tell us we can expect when we have navigated our way through a tough transition is increased wisdom. One piece of that new wisdom has to be a recognition that we will never be finished with tough transitions. Yes, we will work our way through this particular difficult time and that particular change. But we'll never get to a place in life where there are no more transitions. We aren't going to a place in life where there are no more transitions. We aren't going to get so good at the skill of navigating through hard places that the changes don't show up for us as a challenge. Even though I've studied, thought, and written about tough transitions for almost twenty years, I still have to be reminded from time to time by people who love me that I will get through a particular difficult transition. My husband will sometimes jokingly say to me, "You need to sit down and read your own books." There's no life insurance policy one can take out and certainly no author one can catch on to that will bring freedom from the hard work of dealing with transitions. What can we come to understand through our gained wisdom? That there is a process that can conclude with victorious outcomes and a sense of Renewing. That I can make the decisions and the choices that allow us to navigate as smoothly or as roughly through a hard time as is possible at that moment. That a transition is about so much more than what appears. Yes, circumstances and situations around me change, and that launches me into the necessity to navigate myself through a difficult time. But something much more profound is taking place. I am being changed myself. And those changes in me stand to make me more capable, compassionate, and increased in my capacity to put life's ups and downs in perspective. When I begin another tough transition, I have all these learnings and all these valuable experiences at my disposal.

[source: Tough Transitions: Navigating Your Way through Difficult Times, © 2005 by Elizabeth Harper Neeld, PhD, ISBN # 044669455X, pp. 272-273]

[sunstreet]

Dear Marty,

Your welcome and THANK YOU for sharing this wonderful piece of wisdom with us. As you know one of my current challenges is facing the fact that I can no longer ride my bike. To express all that brings up, and all that means for me I would need a lifetime. That is how BIG this change is for me to address. And yet, as difficult and as painful as it is it feels also like a blessing. More and more I see the true and pure love that Melissa and I shared and the fact I had to stop riding was the birth of more clarity and more assurance that Melissa's choice to suicide was not a statement at all about "us" I have always felt I needed to look outside of myself for strength, for safety, for wisdom, and for love. For it did not feel safe to be "me" nor did I feel "I" had value. My tears of late are about the fact that Melissa is not here now to see and feel that I feel safe to be "me" and that "I" value "me" and I see what she always hoped I would. It hurts that I can not share with her this wonderful news and see her smile.

Blessings and Courage, Carol Ann

[Lainey]

Carol Ann,

That was a very interesting article, thanks for sharing.So was the article Marty suggested.

As for Melissa not smiling down on you.. I think she is.

Lainey

[kayc]

It was a privilege just to read what you shared.