Grief Doesn’t Get Easier, It Gets Familiar.
We collect losses as we move through our lives. One after another. If we live a very long time, we’ll probably be able to look back and remember particularly rough years….somewhat brief periods of time that were seasoned with an impossible amount of loss. Sometimes we lose multiple loved ones within months or weeks of each other. Other times we experience multiple life-changing Shadowlosses in succession. Sometimes we define entire decades or chapters of life by our losses, using them as landmarks to find our way across the map of our lives.
A common assumption made about people with death, dying, grief, and loss-related careers is that their professional experience must surely make their personal experience easier. It doesn’t. Perhaps it makes it more familiar, but loss is never easy. You can’t educate yourself out of the impact of a loss, and you can’t convert professional experiences with grief into something that absolves you from it in your personal life.
Losses can be simple. Short. Deep. Destructive. Life-changing. Career-ending. Hard. Slow. As you move through life you will collect loss after loss, and begin to identify the ways these losses were different from each other. Each loss carries different qualities with it. As grief accompanies each of these losses, you will find its appearance becomes familiar. You know what to expect when it arrives. Grief is a consistent, loyal friend who walks with you as you make sense of it all.
It’s not that grief ever really gets easier, it’s that it just gets more familiar.
