Life is characterized by change. Atoms and molecules shift, divide and
combine until the old gives way to the new. Nothing is permanent. Change
is all around us. We embrace many of those changes: growing up;
choosing a career; falling in love. Those changes are exciting and
welcome, like the bud gently blossoming into a lush, red rose.But life's losses are different. Loss is no red, red rose. Loss blows through our lives like a whirling tornado, picking us up and smashing us to the ground. There is really no practical guide to pick us up and set us back on course.
There are plenty of people around to celebrate our good fortune but not many want to help us through the pain of our loss because they don't know how. So they wait for us to feel better.
And we wait, too. We want to return to normal. We want our grief to run its course. We want the pain to stop since we are conditioned to believe that it will, like other pain we've experienced in life. But Loss is different. Loss is not a tooth ache or childbirth or appendicitis. Loss is forever.
In my life I have spent so much time wrestling with Loss and waiting for it to disappear. The more I struggled with Loss, the bigger it got. Loss grew in proportion to my frustration. If we approach Loss as a kind of pain that will eventually disappear, we set ourselves up for disappointment and failure. Loss does not go away.
My goal through this blog is to offer an alternative method of managing Loss and to offer ideas and techniques by which we accept Loss as a part of life that does not have to define our life. We will learn to cut Loss down to size.
