Embracing Grief Series (1)

I’m honored to share some thoughts on this topic for many reasons.  The most important however rests in the fact that there are many in our Christian hip hop community that have endured the loss of a loved one.  Consider this series nothing more than an extra resource support forum/blog to suggest some things while you’re walking through the process of grief.  As a disclaimer, I myself have lost many loved ones, all close to me, and all within a consecutive span of 4 years.  My posts are some of my personal thoughts, along with some reading excerpts that I’ve taken from the community that’s helped me walk through grief.  As a hip hop Christian community, let’s embrace this process together in the name of the healing power of God.

In Time of Grief (Janet Eells)

Many people each year go through the devastating experience of having a wife, a husband, a grandmother, or a child die, but it is different when it happens to you.  If you are like most people, you were totally unprepared and have still not recovered.  As a psychologist and a widow, I know how difficult it is to recover emotional balance following the death of a loved one, but perhaps a few suggestions may help.

Perhaps most important is the fact that it really helps to know about what kinds of feelings and experiences are “normal” or natural for a bereaved person to have.  Many have found their feelings so intense and their behavior so unlike their usual pattern that they have begun to doubt their own sanity.  It can be reassuring to discover that others are having similar difficulties and that much of what you are going through is a precictable reaction to a severe loss.  We who have suffered such a  loss may be expected to go through a number “grief stages” before recovering our emotional equilibrium.  We will probably never fully recover, but much can be done to make our lives more bearable and meaningful.

tbc…