My Grief Is Like the Ocean: A Story for Children Who Lost a Parent to Suicide

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I may be thrilled I am in remission, then my blood draw stats begin to plummet, and fear grips my heart. No, I will never reach full acceptance of any of these losses. But I am not drowning either. I sink under when another dear friend passes. I still feel pain on every Mother’s Day and on her birthday. I tread water and mourn. But the point is one I think all of us cancer survivors and anyone who is suffering from a loss knows – no matter the loss we suffer, we try not to drown permanently, we keep treading water, we sink and rise to the top, and we move on. We do not berate ourselves for not “accepting” our loss, but we praise ourselves for learning to swim and moving our bodies against the tide. Adriel Booker, an author, advocate, and provider of miscarriage and loss resources in Sydney, Australia, so eloquently writes of her experience:

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.” When someone you love is struggling to overcome the negative feelings and emotions they’re experiencing, consider giving them added love and support until their grief reactions subside.The key to surviving grief and the crashing waves, as they seem to wash over us continually, is the happy memory or memories we will carry of those lost, perhaps with lots of scars. Like the ocean, waves of grief come and go. At first it feels like the waves are crashing over your head, but then, eventually, the grief begins to recede. The grief will most likely rise again in some form or fashion, but enjoying the calm and being thankful for the times when grief isn’t too bad is an important part of the healing process. It’s easy to feel guilty for “being ok,” but it’s a positive thing when you make progress after a devastating loss or difficult experience. And everyone will experience the waves of grief in a different way. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. Positively directing your energy from anger toward action, e.g., raising money for a cause, running a race, building a memorial, doing physical work, or participating in sports.

Grief is kind of elusive when you think about it, but that never stops us from trying todescribe it. As a ship far out in the deep ocean in a raging storm, we must learn to adjust our focus, direction, or heading and how to right the ship we will sail upon throughout our lives. Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” ~ Leo TolstoyHere is the link and the infor for the post if you don't want to find the comment: see below. Take Care Letting go and experiencing all that life offers out and ahead of us is a safe place to land when grief is like an ocean, and its waves of grief overwhelm us. The first time we face grief as children, it can feel very foreign, even cumbersome, and unknown. We hardly know what or why grief is and certainly do not understand how to intellectualize it or work through it.

The reality of loss doesn’t immediately sink in. The consequences of loss can take years to manifest, sending a new wave of emotion when least expected. Waves of grief usually happen around the time of significant events that you missed out on, like your loved one’s graduation from college, wedding day, or retirement. Your emotions are unpredictable The irony about grief is that the person you want to talk to about how you feel is the person who is no longer here .”— Unknown A decade ago I set out to write about compassion. In our increasingly connected world, I believed compassion was going to be very important if we wanted to preserve human creativity, health, and prosperity. So I decided to write about that. Grief is like crazy weather. Sometimes showers and storms pop up when you least expect them. ~LauraJay I have read it many times, and it always resonates with me. In the early stages of my grief, it would make me sadder, sometimes angrier. After a few months I felt let down by it’s truth. As if God, or life, or even my own husband could’ve prevented this painful life sentence I now have to carry forever.

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A part of the process of working through your grief requires you to accept your feelings and emotions and become comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Grief work isn’t easy. You may need to reach out to your grief resources and trust in the people you know and love to help you get through it. Reasons Grief Comes in Waves The Loss Foundation is the only UK charity dedicated solely to providing bereavement support following the loss of a loved one to cancer, whether that be spouses, family members, friends or colleagues. We also offer specific Covid-19 loss support. A beautiful story of grief, scars that deep love leaves behind, the crashing waves of sadness that overwhelm you sometimes.

Learn to accept and get through your grief. Don’t ignore or downplay its power to make you a better, more well-rounded person. The families of those struggling with loss may benefit from knowing how to handle waves of grief as they come up. Unfortunately, many family members and other loved ones find themselves feeling frustrated and at their wit’s end because they don’t know what to do to help their loved ones. Turn to your faith or any other spiritual practices. This could involve pray, meditation or any faith based activity. For a very long time I had my own expectation of what people go through when they lose loved ones; however, I truly never connected with the type of pain. I was on the outside looking in. It was when I had my own experience of loss that I understood the unbearable pain that comes afterwards. With this experience I realized that my own expectations of grieving was completely wrong and frankly what I was told about the grief process is wrong. In my family, grief was portrayed as an event that you get over and if you ignore it long enough it will simple disappear. Grief is not something “to get over” but it is a process of learning to live again. Grief is an adjustment to a new way of life. It is in watching clients rediscover themselves that I find grief work so rewarding. To be able to watch someone transform and form a new identify without their loved one is a joyous experience. BUT grief work also means holding space for the pain to come through. Losing a loved one leaves a emptiness that cannot be filled and allowing clients to find out that it’s OK not to be OK. There will be days when the missing of the loved one seems excruciating and then there will be days when you experience tremendous happiness. There is no timeline and not everyone will experience grief the same way. I am not here to “fix”. My purpose is to help clients navigate into this new way of life and find joy once again.Litsa and I are on a never-ending search for grief-related analogies. Analogies are more useful than most people realize, especially when facing unfamiliar and confusing experiences because they help people communicate, understand, make connections, reason, and problem solve. We've compared grief and grief-related emotions toeverything from grief monsters to uninvited guests, but we've yet to find the perfect analogy. Probably because grief is like an amoeba (now that's a simile!). It'salways shifting and changing shape... J ust when you think it's like this, suddenly it's like that. Not to mention, grief is different from person to person. There are common themes, but no two people grieve in exactly the same way. Not even two people who are grieving the same loss. Wave after wave of grief have crashed over me. So far I haven’t drowned. They still come, and I am still learning to swim.