Tag: Grief and Loss

topographia

Grief is the soul’s way of honoring what we have loved. It is not a state to be cured, but a wilderness to be journeyed through. While the world may see only affliction or distress, we recognize grief as the “keen sorrow” that carves out space for a deeper capacity to feel and exist. This space holds the totality of mourning—from the literal death of a loved one to the quiet bereavement of the lives we never got to live—inviting us to sit with the “sharp sorrow” until it reveals its transformative heart.

  • Reflections on Losing My Child, Part 1: Of Love and Terror

    Reflections on Losing My Child, Part 1: Of Love and Terror

    The first in a series of reflections on losing my child, this is my journey of walking her home. Through love, loss, and grief, I search for meaning and try to find a way forward.

  • Senseless

    Senseless

    We never assume, “Today will be the last day of my life.” When my husband leaves in the morning, I never think, “I won’t see him alive again. Later tonight, I’ll have to identify his body.” We do not drive to work in the morning thinking to ourselves, “Tonight I’ll accidentally kill someone.”

  • Acting Weird is Not a Symptom

    Acting Weird is Not a Symptom

    I came to hate the hospital. I feared its bureaucracy—the faceless paternalism, the quiet erosion of our agency. With each visit, it took control of my child, my family, her body. We weren’t being helped. We were being swallowed whole by its vast, impersonal maw.

  • MO-om! She’s staring at me!

    MO-om! She’s staring at me!

    Then, with a soft voice absent of guile, Olivia smiled sweetly and said …

  • Losing Streak

    Losing Streak

    How does one recover from a losing streak, a run of bad luck, a change of fortune–or unimaginable loss?

  • Stupid & Hurtful Things People Say

    Stupid & Hurtful Things People Say

    People say [unkind] things to relieve themselves of feelings of pain, anxiety, and loss, not to offer you any relief. It is, in fact, a denial of your humanity to say those things.

  • Lamentations

    Lamentations

    “There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.” (U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the death of his first son at age three).

  • Breakdown

    Breakdown

    What person could possibly handle all this, and such a fragile child, with limited help, and not scream at some point?

  • Malefic Saturn

    Malefic Saturn

    Saturn: A distant planet. A mythic father who devours. A figure etched with themes of time and restraint, limitations and consequences, and overarching themes of boundaries, discipline, and inevitability—all these are symbols of Saturn.