Grief, I believe, has a personality all its own. We may or may not enjoy its company, but it doesn’t care. When loss occurs, grief shows up, with or without invitation. 

        Let Grief Have Its Say

Of course, life is full of losses; our childhood innocence, a failed marriage, a job we thought was secure, our health that we worked so hard to maintain, our dream home or our retirement fund. A degree of grief accompanies each of these losses, and depending upon the degree of our felt loss, we will, if we allow ourselves to, feel a certain measure of sorrow, ache, anguish, or pain. 

Loss is inevitable as is grief. We can acknowledge the loss, while at the same time, ignore the grief. We can pretend we are okay even when we are not. We can forge our way forward in life despite the heavy load inside our hearts. Though we can fool ourselves into thinking that our grief is all gone, grief is never fooled. It waits, just below the surface, with patience, to be acknowledged. 

Recently, I connected with someone who, like me, lost a parent to suicide. Like me, her family’s suicide became a family secret. Like me, she was young when she heard only the bare facts, “Your father is dead.” Like me, she moved on with her life and lived in the best way she knew how. But when our paths intersected, she wanted to know, “How do you talk about your dad’s suicide?” In other words, how do you talk about what has never been talked about? 

It is interesting that when two strangers meet and discover that they’ve suffered from the same traumatic event, such as in this case, a loved one’s suicide, there can be an instantaneous connection of hearts. Even though the topic may not be up for discussion among family members, a fellow suicide survivor can relate to the ache and pain of another suicide survivor.  

My new acquaintance and I shared the details of our stories, and the similar ways we’d moved forward in life. We even laughed about the times we’ve come off as cool and collected professional women, when in fact we’ve simply learned to detach ourselves from certain emotions because we don’t know how else to live with them. 

Suicide survivors are indeed survivors. There is no question that we know how to survive. The question is, how do we live? How do we live with the pain that suicide leaves us with?

To move past surviving we have to make room in our lives for grief to speak. It has its own time table and cannot be rushed. Unlike taking action steps to accomplish personal and professional goals, grief takes the lead revealing only what we need to know at the time. The end is never in sight and there is no finish line. Grief does not become a thing of the past, instead it integrates itself into our lives as part of our lives.  

Grief is scary. Some have told me that they’ve circled around the juncture many times before finally deciding to give in and go down that path. They are afraid they will lose their way. But we don’t because we are not the only ones on the path. There are many like us and we find each other as we speak about our grief. 

Why bother letting grief speak? When we allow our grief to speak, we discover that we are not alone, but rather find ourselves in the company of others who are just like us.