Navigating Your Unique Grief Journey

It is important to know that your grief journey is unique because YOU are unique. This also means you will grieve differently because your relationship with the person who no longer walks on this earth was unique as well. Only God will ever COMPLETELY understand your grief.

While you are going on this grief journey you are going to experience so many new and different things. Honestly, its truly scary, and if no one has ever related to you in that, I’m right here! As you approach this new season people will try to give you their unwanted opinion thinking they are helping, like Ive talked about before with the Bible Verse band aids or any other “isms”. Part of this grief journey is taking those little sayings with a grain of salt unfortunately. And that! Is also why I want this podcast out there - to share my journey and things I had found helpful so that you may benefit from my struggle. I did the trial so some of you don't have to. I stayed angry and bitter and it didn't work so maybe (hopefully) you’ll take note of that or just relate to that. Use my journey to benefit you, y’all. So, again your journey is unique; there is no formula - no pemdas or quadratic formula you can memorize to get through this journey. The only “prescription” I can give or recommend to you is the Bible and actively seeking out God.

While your journey is unique there are some core concepts you will have to work through: (1) accept that this is a very real situation that you are in (2) You will need to express your emotions - I have covered this before but we will review it again! (3) You are not who you were before this life altering event - I was now a motherless daughter. Its strange and you, yourself will have to adjust to this new you.

Accepting your journey

This may seem very straightforward to some of us. You may be thinking “umm I went to the funeral” or heck, “I planned the funeral, arranged the burial or cremation - I’m pretty sure if anyone is aware of the fact they are not coming back it would be me”. When I think of this acceptance I think of the times I would be in a “dream state” so to say or a haze where in moments I would just be like “Is this real? How is this real? How is this my life?” I vividly remember two particular days of these occurrences. One evening when I was getting out of the shower going through the motions of getting dressed I couldnt help but think how life is so different. How within a matter of months life can go from what was my family’s normal to complete, not chaos, but like swing sides on a pendulum. Then going for a ride with my dad one day cruising down PCH and just remember my mind feeling hazy and then asking him if he ever gets that way too and he said all the time. So it takes great lengths to adjust and truly accept that your loved one permanently moved from earth. To this day I still have dreams that make it seem like even my own self conscious hasn’t accepted it after 7 years. It’s quite frustrating actually. I have these dreams where my mom comes back, and she’s healthy and vibrant and I am completely dumbfounded. I go over in my own mind trying to rationalize that she’s back. I think how no one is going to believe me and if I was just some crazy person who cried wolf either about my mom passing or her coming back. One moment I am in awe that she was back then the next I’m freaking out because I automatically think that I have to re-plan a funeral and go through those motions again. Then I think that I’m going to have to grieve all over again. That I’m going to have to go through the whole hospital spiel again as well. I’m pretty sure I have accepted the fact that my mom is not coming back after 7 years, but I have these dreams that reoccur because my self conscious is doing or remembering something I’m not aware of. Anyways you will have to go through this journey of acceptance in your own way. You will slowly but surely come to this realization in your own way, but I HIGHLY encourage you to go through this with God the first go around. Also, you will feel this numbness at times along your journey. It is going to be a push and pull journey along this journey of acceptance and even beyond.

Express your emotions!

Y’all this is so important and if you grew up or have lived your life where you keep your emotions tucked deep within yourself this grief journey is going to open you up. Expressing your emotions is going to be so difficult at first but when you begin to express them you are then able to release them which alleviates so much weight off your shoulders. I am a person who does not like to express my emotions so openly. I do not like to talk about my feelings, but one thing grieving has taught me is that I have to. I am surrounded by others, others being one of my best friends who wears her emotions on her sleeve and my husband who talks about whatever we’re feeling and how it affects our relationship very well. These two are good at expressing how they are feeling, where as myself I tend to go into a shut down mode which both of these people had worked really hard to tear down my walls. I personally like my walls, but my walls had hardened my heart. When my mom passed i was walking this weird line between being sympathetic to others because we don’t know what others are going through and why we need to treat others with kindness, yet at the same time with those close to me I hardened my heart. I just hardened it toward sentimental emotions toward those I was around. I probably appeared indifferent to them yet put a smile on my face to others. How tired I must have been. Goodness, I need Jesus everyday. I still get tempted to fall back into those patterns and it takes a lot of enabling from the Holy Spirit to keep me going in the right direction. We need the Holy Spirit every single day of our lives - with and without grief in it. The Holy Spirit is our Hope throughout all of this hurt. We need the Trininty through developing ourselves through the pain and struggle. We are going through a painful refinement but I believe we CAN come out stronger.

Who even am I now after this? Our “new identity”.

As Christians we are going to have multiple growing pains throughout our lifetime that will shape us and mold us into newer refined versions of ourselves that will hopefully resemble more of Christ each time. After my mom passed I became a motherless daughter and it was weird. Honestly, it still is a bit weird. I still don't know how to approach mother’s day, especially since I am not a mom yet. I still get some jealousy over others who get to have mother daughter bonding time. It’s weird. While I am a motherless daughter, I now have multiple “moms” in my life. I have women who have carried me through my loss and supported me in a mom role since my mom has passed. And that in itself is weird and a new aspect of my identity where insecurities have creeped in. Are they loving me and involving me because they feel sorry for me? There are those lies being whispered in my mind - “I must be some sort of burden to them. They cant actually like or love me that much.” We need to speak life and scripture truth into our lives over these lies. We need discernment and truth. As we are entering this new identity or new phase of ourselves we have to remember that we are more than the identity we found in relation to the person we no longer have walking earth with us. OR our identity in relation to something we have lost. Just a note here as I’m thinking through this - Grief is different for everyone and what you are grieving can be different as well. You can be grieving a person who has passed, a friendship lost, a strained relationship, a way of life you can no longer have due to physical issues, whatever it is you are grieving I hope you benefit in some way. Okay so in order to move forward in this new phase of ourselves we must first know that our identity is found in Christ - Ephesians 1:5 says “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” Our identity is found in Christ. We are child of the Most High God who has called us His before time began,. Christ saw our faces as He was crucified on that cross. He calls us by name and knows us inside and out. While we may struggle with how we are to move on and question our life’s purpose and “what the heck do I even do now”, we must first know who we are in HIM and through HIM is where we find our identity and our purpose. Isaiah 43:7 states that we were created to glorify God - “Bring all who claim me as their God, for I have made them for my glory. It was I who created them. God created us for His glory.” All we do we must do unto the Lord. He created us for His glory and purposes. This pain and struggle we endure now will make us stronger for HIS glory. I agree with you in this moment that it sucks, we could still bring Him glory if we didn't have to endure this grief, and I, too agree that He could have gotten glory through the miracle rather than my pain. But sometimes I think to myself that maybe the miracle is me surviving grief by His grace…

In closing I want to read through Psalm 139 in reference to this journey we are going on with God :

Psalm 139

The Inescapable God

To the leader. Of David. A Psalm.

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

3 You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

5 You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

7 Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

10 even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and night wraps itself around me,”[a]

12 even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written

all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.[b]

17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

I come to the end[c]—I am still with you.

19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God,

and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—

20 those who speak of you maliciously

and lift themselves up against you for evil![d]

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

22 I hate them with perfect hatred;

I count them my enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my thoughts.

24 See if there is any wicked[e] way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.[f]

Your journey is between you and God although I will say how you go through your grief journey will affect you and those around you.