Let Me Cry

I thought that over time, my grief would shrink, my sadness did not shrink, but I grew until I was so large, that the grief just felt smaller.

When death occurs, the acute phase begins. There is a grieving process that we all go through, and it needs to run its course; there is nothing we can do to suddenly snap our fingers and feel better. For some people, the acute phase lasts a week or a month, while for others, it lasts six to nine months. There is no one right place for the acute phase, but when you're in it, it feels like it just happened and you're in free fall.

But we can speed up that grieving process by allowing ourselves time to grieve. A normal response to grief is to try to get rid of these negative thoughts and to do anything we can to silence them and feel better, but what this often looks like is numbing the pain.

Feel our feelings rather than resist them because there is a beauty in grief and a transformative feeling in sadness that releases the overwhelming emotions we're holding on to, and so by allowing us to fully grieve and we go through that process every single day and not avoiding it, we can really speed up that healing process because we can really get to the root of these feelings by simply spending some uninterrupted time alone with ourselves.

When people are coming out of the acute phase, they will say things like, "I'm just beginning to catch my breath." But in fact, you are far over the grief. Nevertheless, you have found a floor where you are no longer in free fall anymore.

Don't let sadness overwhelm you. Don't feel weak, don't be weakened. I always remind myself, things aren't changing no matter what I do. Don't be in such a condition of grief that you become paralyzed by sadness. The past cannot be changed.

It is okay to be sad. It is a gift from our creator.

But, how long will I grieve? Ask yourself, "How long is a person going to be dead?" Because if they're going to be dead for a long time, you'll grieve for a long time, but that doesn't mean you'll always grieve in pain.

Stay away from the darkness, the gloomy shade of despair that can take away all the wonderful, all the positive in our lives.

If you appear to be fine on the outside, that doesn't mean you are not in deep grief. Everyone grieves in their own way, and it's necessary to understand that other people may grieve differently than you, and you will grieve differently than them, and that's okay.

Yes, we find comfort in each other, but I will never understand your pain, and you will never understand mine. It will never happen. The pain that I can only feel. We try to compare our sadness to that of others. But each situation is unique, every heart is unique, every grief is unique, and the only one who truly understands your pain is God.

Knowing that He understands you like no one else can, knowing that He feels for you like no one else can, and knowing that He sympathizes with you like no one else can.

I believe that most of the pain from loss is from our fear and resistance to loss; once we accept it, we can begin the healing process.

You do not move on because you are ready to; you move on because you have outgrown who you used to be.

Have trust and faith in your Lord.