HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 2/11/19

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

“Was ever grief like mine?”

-George Herbert

Perhaps initially this is what we all think – that we are alone in experiencing so intense and painful a grief. We may even be jealous of that grief – offended at the notion that anyone else could grieve as much as we do.

And in a way, we are right; our experience is like no one else’s. Perhaps this holding on to our grief as though it were unique is a way of learning it, of turning it around and around until we somehow get used to the unthinkable.

Then, after a while, we may welcome the company of others. Most communities have grief support groups of one sort or another – people with whom one can speak freely of how bad it is without fear of being thought excessive or indulgent. When you begin to describe a particularly sharp moment of unexpected pain, these friends will nod their heads – Yes, I know what you mean. They know the stumbling blocks and pitfalls of the journey we are making, and they help by assuring us that things really do get better. 

In time, we become such helpers ourselves.

My grief is mine, and I am a part of the human family.