Moving from Grief to Growth

On June 1, 2018, my good friend KCT died. Just like that. No illness, no warning, just gone.
The phone rang, my world reeled, and it was devastating.

We all continue on – she would have wanted that. But not before a lot of grief and reflection takes place.

Our girl, Karen, has a lot of friends, and each one of them is special and unique. That’s exactly who she is….she can make everyone feel like they are her number one – and they are! I am no different – Karen is one of my besties and she gets me. We have a long history of shared joys, sadness, pains, accomplishment, disappointment, life changes, hurt feelings, growth, set backs, a little gossip, and a wickedly funny (and usually just plain wrong sense of humor) that I have to reflect on.
She is also one of the people, that I could count on one hand, that knows my darkest secret and holds it close to her heart. It’s the one that I can’t quite forgive myself for, but she never judges. She holds a similar pain. We are able to talk about how those kind of things, while in the distant past, can creep up and impact today’s world, without us even knowing until it is too late. We talk a lot. It seems we talk more now after her passing than we even did when she lived and worked just a few miles from my house.

I don’t share that to stand out in any way – I’m sure she shares similar with many. Karen loves to gab, and it’s quite certain that in her heavenly state, she can carry on infinite simultaneous conversations, and is doing just that. I share it to begin to illustrate how grief can lead to growth.

A therapist once told me that I would win the Olympic Gold Medal in Coping. When something bad, unpleasant, or downright evil happens, often the emotions are so overwhelming and we cope with it to survive.
There are all sorts of coping mechanisms, and most people use them at some point or another. The kicker is that if we don’t move out of coping and deal with those emotions, they stick around and manifest in all sorts of ways. And then we end up coping with those consequences and the layers just stack and stack and stack. For the last few decades, my personal favorite has been to push it down and numb any little outliers that tried to escape.

Now, it’s not like my life is some Greek tragedy, it’s not – I have a magnificent life!
I have just had some struggles when it comes to dealing with sadness and pain. When Karen left, I made a conscious decision not to cope as I had before. Letting the emotions flow without squashing them was tough at first, but it brought such a feeling of calm afterwards.
Grief is a funny thing.
You think you work through it and move into a bit of acceptance, and then boom, right back to the bottom. But it’s a growth process. With each cycle there is healing and a stronger sense of peace. With Karen, I use conversations. We talk about the void, we talk about the other things happening, and we talk about the future. No matter your belief system, there are avenues to chat with the ones that touch our souls after they leave our physical world.

Each person’s growth is their own journey and time frame. None is more right than the other.

I can tell my conversations with Karen have spurred growth.
With each new challenge that life is throwing at me, it becomes (a bit) easier to work through the feelings – it doesn’t make it any faster or less painful, just not so much resistance to the process.

As for her, I still miss the hell out of her, and probably always will. But I can cherish our memories with smiles and just a few tears, instead of a flood.

Memories like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rshg6DxFSyM

And these…..