The fire of Grief. — Journeyto86

I don't think we ever get used to losing people. Whether planned or taken by accident. There's no safety manual for how to operate grief. No easy recipe on how to come out smelling good. It will no doubt come in waves. Ones that knock the breath out of your chest, and ones that almost drown you. But never ones that wash your grief clean.

I'm in the planning stages of a podcast on Trauma Based Leadership, or rather a significant event that threw you into a firey journey. The more I experience grief the more I think about my work in this podcast.

What do Spider-Man, Joe Biden, and MADD (Mothers against Drunk Driving) all have in common? Each of those people lost a loved one, and then they put their grief to work. They piled it into a bag, threw it over their shoulder, and walked out the door into the world. They did something with it. They didn’t let it sit idly and hope that ‘someday’ time would heal the wound. Because time doesn't heal all wounds---that I know.

When we are wounded at the most intimate level of how we identify ourselves in our lives in the world (as family, Moms, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters and friends), we have a choice— to let the heat of the fire burn us down to nothing and become a pile of ash-meaningless and forgotten about or to consume ourselves in the energy that blazes from that fire and rise with it.

There were many times where I chose to keep myself warm with Ashes surrounding me. Where I'd waste half of my day laying in the corner of couch saying "why me"?

But now. But Now. I rise. Or at least I try too.

Yesterday my uncle was killed in a car accident. He was the brother to my dad. I know family's experience trauma. I get it. We are complex systems. But I feel as if my family has been dealt quite the hand. Not only did my Grandma lose her son today, she also lost her other son (My Dad) many years ago leaving only her one son left now. But that's not all, as 2/3 of her grandsons also have died, Aaron was killed in a robbery in 2000 and Justin (my brother) died of an abscess in his throat just last year at only the age of 30.

Nothing makes grief any easier.

You and I, we didn’t ask for these experiences of loss we’ve received, for fuck sake I've had plenty this year. But if you change your perspective it is still a gift and its yours – and you can’t give it back (I tried), and you can’t re-gift it (nobody wants it) but you can choose how you want to use its energy. It’s a gift with immense power that if you don’t harness it and put action to it, you will be on the other end of it becoming ash by its untamed supremacy and invincibility.

This is your superpower. Your fucking thing.

Taking action and being an active participant in your healing doesn’t mean founding your own nonprofit or going viral in your plea for help, attending 109 therapy sessions, or starting your own podcast about your healing. It simply means showing up sometimes. It means, every day you take one small action towards healing. Maybe today it’s taking a deep breath while taking a cleansing bath with some lavender. Maybe tomorrow it’s a walk outside on a trail by the river, and maybe the next day you invite a friend for coffee. And maybe the the next your first therapy session. And maybe the first year it's just sharing your story and pain with a stranger. You start from where you are with the pure and sole intention of becoming part of the rising of your fire.

When you do those small things a shift in power happens, where your grief does not consume you. Where you are no longer at the mercy of its strength. When you try even in the smallest ways....It instead shifts your energy to manifest beautiful changes in your life and the greater world around you.

Remember when you share your story with a stranger today, you aren't just talking....you are choosing to rise.

It comes in the smallest of ways. And so I rise. With these words, today, to you. I rise.

http://wjactv.com/news/local/coroner-called-to-fatal-accident-on-rt-271