Sometime when we are walking our grief path we can feel we are doing it wrong, or not good enough, or not deep enough, or not fast enough, or not long enough. We tend to have lots of judgment about how we do or do not express our grief both privately and publicly.
Here is the good news; We can’t get our grief wrong!
Luba, client of mine, is grieving the sudden and unexpected death of her daughter Linda. She has been open, authentic, generous, and courageous in her expression of her grief from profound anger to deep sorrow and everything in between. She found that art was her most effective way of sharing her grief journey and I have published many of her paintings. The one of bluebell flowers, the reincarnation of Linda, was especially touching.
I spoke with Luba this week and she said she had made a mistake, that the bluebells were what she wanted for her deceased daughter when in fact Linda was actually a bouquet of daisies! So she simply did another painting that recognize Linda’s daisy-ness.
She thought she had done it wrong.
“Nope,” I said, “you can’t get your grief wrong Luba. You simply have found a deeper expression of it, one that fits your love of your late daughter Linda more closely.”
Relieved Luba said, “I always knew she was a Daisy!”
And so it goes, grief gets expressed layer by layer in its own time; its own rhythm; and in its own way.
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