Heartfelt Sorrow
By Brenda Wiseman, RN, C

When people we love die, we begin a journey of the heart. Intellectual understanding of the grief process helps reassure us that we are not "going crazy" even when it can feel that way. Love and loss, however, are experiences of the heart and the greatest hope of healing resides in the heart. "Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much the heart can hold."

Loss is universal, but the experience of grief is personal and unique. Although there may be common threads running throughout the grief experience, each person also walks a solitary journey in search of meaning and peace. Many have found it helpful to share their experience in a safe community of peers where others bear witness to their sorrow without judgement. A grief support group can offer a place to talk through feelings without need for censorship and be received with understanding, compassion and respect.

The goal of grief work is not to bring closure on to forget. Grief is about deciding what we can keep and how it will shape who we become. It is a lifelong process. This is not a linear path. Life often collapses on itself and we move forward taking with us all that we learned.

Some people have described the death of a loved one as feeling like a part of them was amputated when the person died. This sense of dis-memberment is diminished by re-membering. It's by remembering that we ever feel whole again.

Grief is about more than sorrow. Grief is about loving for a lifetime.

Life and death have been the most meaningful teachers for me. My personal work in bereavement began 25 years ago following the deaths of my sister's two sons. My sister began to believe that she could survive then grief slowly began to transform itself into gratitude for the lives of her two precious sons. Her heart had begun to shut down while paralyzed by grief. Gratitude was the antidote that slowly began to open her heart again. Since that time, I have come to believe that a grateful heart can never close and with an open heart anything is possible.

Godspeed