The other day I thought about all the times in my life where I had become overwhelmed with some sort of tragedy and how grief would consume me. That aching feeling of despair that seems to take refuge in the depths of your heart and in the corners of your soul. I then thought of how "grief" could actually be compared to raising a child. You see you give birth to the child, it's new unfamiliar and at times uncomfortable. Grief always felt like that to me in the beginning after something tragic happened. I knew I wasn't familiar with it but I knew it was something I just couldn't leave on someone else's doorstep. And as a child grows up so does grief. A child tends to have breakthroughs or stepping stones that he or she achieves as they grow older. Grief does as well. As time goes on grief will make strides and show you that it's ready to get out of the diapers it's been in for years. Sure, we'd like to think the transformation from child to adult would be smooth sailing but we all know bumps on the road occur. Misjudgments, mistakes, falls, scrapes, cuts <--- that all happens. And just when you think grief has come so far it can too fall down that one stair on the front porch that you're dad never fixed, or wet the bed after years of using the big person toilet. It's quite the image to conjure in your mind... trying to visualize grief as a substance of reality. But with experience and tears both a child and grief grow. Growth is hard to ignore because when someone wants to move forward growth becomes inevitable. The funny thing is once that child becomes an adult they'll never really "grow up" per say. Quite frankly, grief will do the same. In my experience I've sent many griefs off to college, they've started families, but there is always that lingering sense of attachment. That sense of belonging because we're bound by blood. I will not call it back, just as a parent would not call their child back to the nest, because I want them to be free. Maybe some people think grief is a bad thing, I think it's a necessary thing. It allows a person to feel. And the day your child walks off without your hand in theirs, you know you've achieved something great.
