Grief is an aggressive antagonist, deflating the whole of our emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual resources.

However, it does not require us to be passive, as if it is done to us.

Grief can be exhausting work that in our most courageous moments we embrace,

Grief is a process, because mourning deep loss is too significant to be done quickly or simply as a single event.

We grieve and re-grieve: New loss triggering old loss.

Whether caught off guard in the most unexpected moments or intentionally and actively remembering, we grieve.

We need moments of reprieve, the glancing away from pain’s intense stare.

Then we breathe deeply, rally our resources, and press on – oscillating at times between hope and despair.

Healing comes by embracing, not denying, the truth of the excruciating loss – an embrace requiring courage, not unentangled by fear.

By acknowledging the importance of the things we have lost and the impact of their absence, we value their great worth.

As our entire being reacts to our experience of being in the world without that which we treasured or hoped for, may we remember the truth:

We were not made for these losses; This was not ultimately intended for us.

-Rochelle Matthews Stoltzfus, MA, LPC,

Human, One who Grieves Yet Hopes

{Originally written January 2016}