Grief is unfamiliar to us. It sits in your gut, a feeling you can't quite digest. Like someone who is lactose intolerant trying to eat a bowl of ice cream. Our bodies just weren't made for it and we can't quite figure out what to do with it.
It's around us each and every day. The news is full of grief and pain. We lose family members and friends. You might lose your home, sense of security, the life you knew before. Death and loss are the only things we can count on. Well that and taxes. We grieve constantly. So why hasn't it become more natural?
We find all sorts of ways of training ourselves to manage the discomfort. Platitudes and cliches that help us bandage over an out of place virus infecting our spirit. "She's in a better place. This was all for the best. We're never given more than we can handle." We learn to cope, we learn to grow around the pain, we learn to manage.
Maybe if we could admit how difficult grief is. Maybe if we could acknowledge how out of place it feels to grieve. Maybe if we knew in our bones we were not made to move from loss to loss, maybe we would find more compassion and more courage. Maybe we would be more hesitant to cause or excuse grief in another.
