Loss; What we Lose and What we Gain

Loss; It's something we face our whole lives. From a broken toy to a dead goldfish to financial loss, marriage loss or loss of a loved one. Words are not enough to describe what we go through and the parts of ourselves that we seem to lose with each loss. We aren't taught how to deal with our emotions. Our parents didn't know how to talk to us about loss and in turn we don't know how to talk to our children about loss much less how to deal with it ourselves.

There are five stages of grief:
1. Denial and Isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
(Click here for a full outline of the stages of grief and loss)

We often get lost well before we ever reach acceptance and we never find our way out of grief, more piles on and we feel as though we may suffocate. I want learn what I can about loss so that I can get to acceptance. I want to grieve and not resist it. I had been resisting it so much that I became physically ill. When I realized what was happening I had a cry and good long ugly cry. I cried like I have never cried before. When I was done I no longer felt ill, I felt good and at peace somehow. Like I had accepted what happened to me for the first time.

Grief is an intensely personal thing; everyone grieves in a different way and for different periods of time. With children we can ask questions. "How does that make you feel?" and empathize "I'm sad too" or "I'm angry too" If they are angry or sad or whatever validate their feelings. For yourself; if you don't have someone that will validate your feelings, validate them yourself. It's ok "talk" to yourself about your grief weather it is internal or aloud. I believe that this technique can be very helpful.

We have lost and it has hurt. In the last 6 months I have lost my grandpa, my husband's uncle, a friend, my friend had a miscarriage and so did I. We all have stories; we have lost, we have cried and mourned and been afraid. If this is all we focus on though, we will go crazy. We will only see loss and the truth is that we have lost but we have gained too.

I have gained. I have gained closer friends, a deeper spiritual life, a new closeness with my son, an understanding and compassion for people going through a difficult time, specifically miscarriage.

Does what I have gained replace what I have lost? No loss is loss; I will never gain back what I lost BUT I can gain more that what I lost; More richness, a deeper fuller life, happiness beyond compare. I may not get what I wanted, but I gain new wants that are more refined to what I wanted all along anyway.

Loss makes us look at the world differently. We have a choice; once we have mourned what we lost we can move forward but we can also stay exactly the same. When we experience loss I think one of the biggest things that haunts us is regret. If I had only done this or said that; we cannot live that way. If we compare our life to driving a vehicle and we are constantly looking in the rear view mirror concerned about what is behind us, we will inevitably continue to crash into things and cause more damage. We need to look forward to what lies ahead in our lives. We cannot live looking back at what we regret.

This is not the end; this is a new beginning.