loss
"Muhammad Ali didn’t ever apologize for being Muhammad Ali."
Our husbands are irreplaceable.
Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion and Still Writing, considers those people that slip away—and how we can go on with bravery and compassion.
You're not alone in this.
WHAT'S HAPPENING
I'd planned to tell Mom how much I loved her, but it was too late. I swallowed the lump in my throat and instead all I could hear myself say was, "Mom, I can't look at you, because if I do I know I'll lose it." We took one step, then another, and walked what I didn't know would be the last walk we'd ever share again. And just like that, she gave me away.
"Grief will always be with me, but my two boys will forever be the best things about me."
To lose a child is to lose the very heart and soul of you. It is overwhelmingly disorienting. It takes a long, long time to find yourself again. It takes a long time to grow new life around the chasm of such grave loss. It takes a long time to grow beauty from ashes.
Grief is not pretty. It is loneliness at a primal level. Like some organ has been removed and you can't really breathe properly. It's waking up each morning where your first thought is this is another day without your person. And in that way, without the you that you were. It's going to bed alone each night without him.
"Don't see the person as 'broken,' and don't see them as where they are right now," according to Iyanla Vanzant.