Grief and Growth- A Therapist’s Perspective

Being on a grief and growth journey with you is an honor and privilege.  As painful as it is sitting here with you –  grief-stricken, numb, a broken egg shell of a person whose insides are pouring out –  I, your counselor,  hold your pain in all its rawness.   We sit together as your grief oozes out like a tube of toothpaste squeezed to its core with nothing left.

Grief is the part of life we all run from.   We look to avoid pain and sorrow at all costs.  After all, we are pleasure seekers.   But it enters our lives, sometimes slowly and insidiously with a chronicity that we can practically see as it takes hold in our life, or at times totally out of left field as the curve ball hits us smack in our face and knocks us flat out.

Grief is the natural response to many different types of critical life events.  We more often than not begin this journey flattened out.

I did as I entered my therapist’s office 31 years ago after finding out my daughter was not the normal, perfect child I excitedly anticipated.   The balloon burst, the egg cracked; like humpty dumpty, I had to be put back together.   My wobbly legs eventually found some solid ground on which to begin to carve out a new road – that of parenting a child with disabilities.

We must allow ourselves to enter that dark, seemingly closed off cave of despair, tugging and pulling at the cobwebs that threaten to entangle us in their sticky hold of pain.  It is that tight and restrictive grasp that eventually gets loosened as our eyes begin to adjust to the dark.  We start to see shadows. Eventually some light filters in.  And we start our climb up and out of the cave.

We slowly acclimate to the outside.  We blink a lot as our eyes adjust.  We are now ready to take small steps towards rejoining life.  As we once knew it?  That’s the question.   We’re coming to it now with a new vantage point, a different perspective.   And so it’s taking on a different shape and form, not quite as we knew it; probably quite differently.   We integrate the old with the new; what was with what is; our old dreams giving way to a new reality.   Transformation and growth occur here as we blend the two, shaking it up into a new concoction of life.

There is beauty and inspiration in this work of the human condition.  It is going into the depths of sorrow and discovering and reaching the heights of the human spirit and potential.   I am in awe and gratitude to have this be my life’s work.