Today’s tip: LET’S TALK ABOUT DEATH…
I cannot believe you are still reading after the title. Thank you! Please go on. I know this is not a topic we dwell on joyfully, but avoidance may bring about more complications and pain than a candid conversation might usher, even if only with yourself.
Perhaps because the news bombard us daily with reports on how many people are dying due to COVID-19, we might be paying more attention to death than we did in the past. I am not sure if this is good or bad, but it seems to be a fact for many. I am equally not sure that engaging in a debate about the ‘top 10 causes of death in 2020’ and how COVID-19 ranks amongst them will be particularly cheering or useful. What I firmly believe is that morbidly focusing on daily casualties is as pointless as obliviously pretending that nothing is going on. So, let’s talk about death, or more accurately about ‘living with death’.
It is undisputed that we will all eventually die, and I pray that such a day will come for us only after many, many years of a happy life. However, when our day comes, we will not be suffering the consequences of the event. We will be gone, and those who survive us are the ones who will have to manage the situation as best they can. So, let’s think about this after reviewing the tips given by Nora McInerny below. She candidly talks on how to go about with your lives while grieving, how to support others grieving, and how to reduce the pain on grieving.
On this matter, after pondering on her conference and reviewing a couple of other sources, I took two things to heart when we lose someone we love:
1) rushing or trying to rush out of the pain is not wise. Give yourself time to mourn. It is ok not to be ok. And,
2) we do not ‘move on’ after the mourning period. We do not leave our lost loved ones behind. We move forward with them and write new chapters in our lives based on the ones we wrote with them. I am sure you will have more profound and more useful learnings ad would gladly discuss them with you.
May you and your families be blessed with health and love, as well as with strength, wisdom, and peace should you have to face the terrible pain of losing a loved one. My tribute to the families and friends of the dear colleagues we have lost in 2020.
We don’t move on from grief;
we move forward:
We don’t move on from grief – TED