Badassery Magazine Issue 10 March 2017 | Page 44

by Danielle Williams

Sanity and Love

Insights on the journey through grief .

by Danielle Williams

Grief ... the ultimate shape shifter . Heavy and expansive .
It ’ s a juxtaposition of guilt and gratitude , loss and light , sensory overload and seemingly unending emptiness . It ’ s the most breathtaking numbness I ’ ve encountered . It ’ s weird and flat and horribly angry at times . It has the power to drop you to your knees in three bars of a nostalgic song , or the catch of a fleeting familiar scent . If you know grief you know it intimately - there is no acquaintance status when it comes to grief .
Death , grief , the rawness of mortality can be such a tricky space to navigate . Here are a few insights sent with massive love to make your journey through the grieving process a little easier , a little less confusing and supported af . I know the depths of where you are . You are loved . The sun will shine again .. x
Insights for those journeying 43
There is no grief timeline . There is no strategy to make it through the gauntlet of grief unscathed in record time .
This journey is personal . So very personal . And subject to shifting shape with little to no notice .
Please have grace . Grace for yourself . Grace with the others around you . Grace for tears . Grace when you feel the rays of light returning to your heart ( yes , guilt over happiness really is a thing ). Just grace . More grace then you have ever had to muster before and then double that at the very least .
It can be so easy to slip down that steep unfamiliar terrain as you try to navigate this brutally raw new season . This life sized vacuum of space . Self care , self love , it all just seems to drop away in a blink . In the very life situation that these love soaked , gracious practices would serve you best , they tend to get blown
somewhere far off into the distance to swirl around in the soft chilled breeze with the thoughts of dinners and hearty laughs and passed down stories that were to lay in the future .
One of the go-to coping mechanisms in the arena of grief is what I like to call the Hero stage . I don ’ t mean Hero as it pertains to a gloriously caped crusader ridding the world of masked evil . But the duties of these two share a pretty similar weight load on one ’ s shoulders . And it seems to come quite naturally for us big hearted ones , the empaths , the lovers of good , the care takers .
There are wills to read into , estates to clear , finances to sort . Endless arrangements to be made , choices ... so many damn choices . Family and friends near and far to comfort , to whisper words of encouragement and strength to , even when they feel so very hollow . Even still you are so desperate to find the warmth