“No one can reap the fruit before planting the trees.”
-Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Grief sucks. We’d like to grow from the grief without having to experience the pains that go along with it. It would be great if grief pain was like a twenty-four hour bug, and just went away as suddenly as it appeared…. Unfortunately, grief entails work. It requires attention and time. It is exhausting and yet rewarding in its own way.
Seeing any sort of pay off from grief is like planting a fruit tree and waiting for it to grow. It is long, it is full of frustration, requires patience, and demands surrender to the environment. You can’t just plant the tree and expect fruit to grow without expending some effort. The tree needs tending. It needs nourishment and sunlight and space to grow.
Grief also needs tending, nourishment, and space. Before you can see the rebalancing of post-loss life or feel the diminution of grief’s emotional spiral, you have work to do. Grievers have to engage their negative emotions, their plans for the future, their loneliness and anxiety in an effort to get to a place of peace. And that peace comes with a lot of hard work.
Have patience with your personal growth during grief. What can you do today to cultivate peace and balance in your post-loss life? What nourishment can you provide yourself today that will help balance your post-loss life in the future?
A.N.Carroll 