The Familiarity Of Grief

In my experience, when you’ve suffered the pain of multiple losses, you get used to it.

What I’m not sure is – does this mean you’re broken? Beyond repair?

Or does it just mean that you now know, in a very real way, that life goes on and you get through it? So when something else happens, a part of you hangs it’s hat on this fact and leads the rest of you forward?

It still hurts, yes. Each time in a slightly new and unique way as the circumstances surrounding your grief change. But the more acquainted you are with grief and loss, the more you know you can bear. The more you know that the next day comes, and the next. And that after a while, this too shall pass, although not fade entirely.

So I find myself feeling a sort of disconnect with my ever-present grief. And I’m finding I have a strange new way of dealing with new griefs – from the loss today of a pet cat, to the untimely death of someone I admired greatly, to the potential failure of our last and final round of IVF. I have this new-found ability to step back and see things in perspective. This new perspective is one with the benefits offered by hindsight, and the ability to look back at past loss and see the path out the other side. Different each time, but possible.

Probable, even.

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