HUG Corner – Thought for the Week 4/17/17

April 17, 2017

From “Healing After Loss” Martha Whitmore Hickman

“It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends.”

-George Macdonald

How can we not look ahead to all those days, months and years when we will be without the one we loved?

There are times, surely, when we can’t help ourselves. But we don’t have to do it all the time. Perhaps we can adopt the pattern recommended in the “rational-emotive” approach.

Allow ourselves a certain half hour of the day when we will give our grief full sway—and even allow ourselves to anticipate the long future without our loved one. At other times, when those thoughts come knocking, we turn them away—Not now, this isn’t the time for you. Come back at five thirty—then you can have my full attention.

When five-thirty comes, we should be as good as our word: if those sad thoughts come rolling in, let them. When the half hour is up, inwardly change the subject and busy yourself with something else. 

I am not trying to overlook these feelings of long-term grief—just to keep my life from being inundated by them.

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