Dear Grieving People Everywhere

Dear Grieving People Everywhere,

There are so many things I want to say to you.  I don’t know if you are ready to hear them, but I’m going to say them anyway, because I am where you are now. Also, I have to say them because I am a person of many words, and when something happens, I always have to say a lot of words about it. Think of my words as a gift you didn’t expect and maybe didn’t want. You can keep them or pass them on, or roll your eyes and throw them away, but here they are.

You are at a crossroads in your life.  This is probably the single most important moment in your entire life, because this is the moment you have to decide whether to slide into a life of despair and misery that will never end, or to get up from life’s floor and be the brilliant light in the world that you were born to be.  The day you were born, someone looked at you, so tiny and beautiful, and so determined and stubborn and they knew that world had just received someone special - someone that the world needed.  Maybe it was your mom or your dad.  Maybe it was your grandmother or your aunt, or a labor and delivery nurse or a lady from a neighboring tribe. Maybe it was God.

Whoever it was, that person knew that you were here for a reason. They knew you were meant to live a life that no one else could live, and today you get to decide what kind of life you want it to be. I know that you are struggling, and you should get all the help and support you need dealing with your loss – counseling, support groups, medication if you need it.  But the real healing that you need will not come from the outside world. It will come from within you.  It will come from that empty hole in your life left by the person you loved.

If you keep staring into that empty hole in your life where your loved one used to be, your life is going to be empty.  You have to fill up that hole in your life with good things, and you must go out and find those good things because no one else can find them for you. What you see is what you get.  If you see emptiness, you get emptiness.  If you see something beautiful, what you get is beautiful. It’s time for you to dive into that hole and discover who you are and why you are still here on earth.  Discover your passions and your purpose in that hole.  Instead of getting lost in your grief, let your grief be your guide to a more joyful and loving life, a more passionate and purposeful life.

Instead of letting this loss be the thing that ruins your life, let it become the thing that saves it.  Let it be a turning point so that in 20 years, when you look back on this time, you can say “That was the moment I found myself and my purpose and my passion. That is the moment I changed my life and the lives of people I care about. That loss was horrible and tragic, but that loss saved me in a way that nothing else could save me.”

One day when I was feeling low, my sister came over, and she wanted to do something, and I said I didn’t feel like doing anything. 

She said, “Get up, Karen, we’ve got shit to do!”

And I said, “What kind of shit?”

And she said, “Well, we won’t know until we do it.”

We ended up having the best day together, full of adventures and laughter and love.

So, what I am saying to you now is, “Get up, you’ve got shit to do!”  And I don’t know what that shit will be yet. You won’t know until you do it. But I do know that you can change your life.  You can change your loved one’s lives.  You can change the world. You can make it brighter and funnier and more compassionate and more exciting.  And when you leave the world and you rejoin your lost loved one as a spirit, you can say, “Look what I did! Look what I did for myself.  Look what I did for all the people we loved.  Look what I did for the world!”

And if your loved one is anything like my sister, they will probably say, “Well come on, we’ve got shit to do!” And then your two spirits will go off and have new adventures.

Life and death are both adventures.  And only you have the power to decide what kind of adventures they will be.  Decide today.

It’s time to get up now. You’ve got shit to do. It’s time for you to build the kind of life your lost loved one would want you to have, the kind of life they will cheer for and be amazed by, the one-of- a- kind life that you were born to live.

I will shut up now. (At least until tomorrow.)

Love,

Karen

Person of Many Words