Grief
I remember memorizing it in Sociology my freshman year of high school. DABDA. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. The grief cycle. And I've learned a few more things about it since then: it doesn't come in neat, 2-week segments that you easily move through, just taking your good old walk through Grief Park. It's messsy....you could move through the cycle many times over as you move through it in a macro way.
You could stay put in one area for a long time. Others experiencing your same situation could move at a very different pace - and each one of us legit in our process.
And here I am, moving through another cycle of grief.
Not pregnant.
Those words sting. Again. For the 11th time this year. I walk through the grief cycle every 32 days....which feels like a lot of grieving. I would like to skip it, but I cannot seem to make my heart do that.
Anybody else able to make their heart do something that it doesn't want to do? When you figure out how, lemme know. And then write a book, make millions, buy a yacht.
Maybe you need a chart, too. I like this one. I would even say it's a Death to Life cycle. The death of something/someone occurred on the left and you walk through it until you are walking in life. And so many deaths can happen in our days: the death of a dream, an idea, a hope, a person you thought was someone and was actually someone else, a unfulfilled desire, as well as a loved one....
I also fight to be aware that my God was "well acquainted with sorrows and grief." (Isa 53:3) He is not a stranger to pain, loss, isolation, confusion, sadness. And because of that, I do not walk alone. I do not walk alone. I do not walk alone. (Maybe if I say it over and over again it will sink in.)
Here's to you, Grief Cycle. May you help us understand ourselves. May we embrace, even in the pain, what Socrates has said: "An unexamined life is not worth living."
