Author Thoughts – GriefShare – 081425
We finished week 2 of 13 weeks of GriefShare this evening. As a facilitator, I always want to see signs of progress with our participants. It may be selfish of me to want to see an impact each week, but that’s not always the case. The program is 13 weeks in duration, and we have participants who have lost loved ones from only a month ago to some with several years under their belt. There is no immediate solution for either of them. Grief is like that. It’s on you. Every day it’s on you, and it can smother you.
I told the class last week that they needed to become sharks to survive, because sharks must continue to swim to keep from drowning. We can drown in our grief if we disconnect from it. We can easily become isolated if we do not continue to swim… to the current…to move forward in our grief.
I shared a personal story about sitting on the levee in Aurora, OH, watching the Ohio River, lost in thought. I’d lost my mother and three weeks later, my job. My mind was blank as I watched the river. No agenda. Just blank. Along the riverbank, I watched a whirlpool eddy swirl in place, undisturbed and ignored by the river’s current. There were many things in the whirlpool, but a plastic milk jug caught my attention.
I watched the empty jug swirl round and round before it hit me…I was that jug. I was stuck in my grief. It was easy to do because it was so personal. It’s all I could think about. I had to consider what was next. Not easy, but necessary.
How many of our GriefShare participants were swirling? How many were ready and willing to swim to the current? I wish I had an answer, but this program only gives answers for those suffering loss. I encouraged the group to become like sharks. That got me a few questioning facial expressions until I said that sharks needed to keep swimming to prevent drowning. And if we stop moving forward, we can drown in our grief. Not sure if I planted any seeds, but growth follows if they can swim.
Peace! G.