I am a 47 year old widow and mother of 4 sons.  November, 2009 my wonderful husband lost his fight with stage 4 brain cancer, leaving us lost and searching for answers.  For two of my sons this was the second parent they’d lost.  Their biological mother died when they were very young, shortly after my husband and I were married.  Grief has been a resident in our home for many years.

Grief isn’t a bad thing, it is very healthy as long as we don’t remain stuck there, never venturing past the pain of our loss.  Grief is very painful.  Grief is also very physical as well as emotional.  I’ve often described the physical feeling of grief as the lead blanket that is put over you for protection when you have an x-ray taken, except that this lead weight is never removed.  The so called stages of grief aren’t so much stages as they are emotions that come and go at will, crashing in like a tsunami wave when you least expect them… sometimes even after months of feeling “okay”.

Grief is necessary for healing to occur, there is no other way to be whole again after the loss of a loved one.  However, no two people grieve the same way either.

I hope you will join me on this journey of healing.  Some days we may cry, others we will laugh, but each day forward is a day closer to finding what our new “normal” looks like.