Tag: Seasons of grief

Just Another Day

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief, Discharging Trauma, The Suicide and its Aftermath

The rain is falling outside, and finally my plants are drinking water. It wasn’t this way ten years ago: the day was so different from what I’m doing today.

PTSD holds one’s mind captive, and you only free yourself from it by sending the order out to the iceberg, calling a summit at the battlement, and declaring personal war on the mind. I didn’t know I’d be doing this ten years ago, and I couldn’t imagine what a peaceful day this has been. It was worth it all.

Wow, did I just do this?!!!! Yes, I’ve done the navigation in several different boats. Looking back, I started out in a dinghy, and while it was stable, it wasn’t sleek. Part of the river I went down was all about Styx and getting to new shores, and then getting back on a new boat and going further. The thing about Styx is that I can’t tell you where that ugly and dark place began. I can tell you where it dumped me out: it dumped me out when I realized that there was hope in all of this. I went inland and took a look around. When I got back to the water, once again a new and sleeker craft was there for me.

Tonight I will gather with four friends, and we’ll celebrate all that I’ve done. It will be good to eat cake and to have a friendly chat.

Today, ten years ago, I was in shock, and I was traumatized. I was on the phone to family, and while I know I was doing it all, it is as if I’m looking back on events that happened, and in my mind as if someone gave me a “forget-it-all pill.” I have no memory of the stuff that happened that day. Clearing the trauma took it all away.

Today, while out, I spoke naturally, used Dutch, and smiled at people, and all along the way I’m marveling at how normal it all is. This is an experience that hasn’t happened in the last ten years of doing August 28th.

I’m not on drugs. I’ve experienced the seasons of grief and come out in good shape. I’ve discovered that grief is a soul journey calling us to attend to ourselves as gently as possible. We ride the train until we’re expelled at the central station and forced to find a new line. In our wanderings we discover shops and hiding places we haven’t seen before. We take delight in the new discoveries and understand that, while it doesn’t seem like it at first, our loss and the grief it has brought is a gift. You can’t see this at the beginning because all you can do is cry. For weeks and months, it seems as if your universe has done a number on you—it has!!!

You are not in a dream; you are in a place feeling things you never knew about, and never in your wildest dreams could have imagined for yourself. And then the tears change, the river changes, and you exit the winter of grief to find the first vestiges of hope. It is spring! Slowly and gently, spring will move us into summer. We stay in summer, learning and growing, until finally, one day, we’re seasoned well enough to invest in the warmth of fall, with its rich and deep colors, and now, with our wisdom, we understand that the tearful winter of grief enables us to exercise new freedom.

While some of this has been really hard, I won’t take it back. It has made me who I am, and I understand that it all links together.

I waited for the right day to say goodbye to Jon: I did that in 2022 at Bracelet Bay in Wales. Today I greet the next decade with curiosity and hope in my own tiny home, and with a new future. The woman sitting at her dining table on August 29th of 2016 did a great thing. I really did this! Today, it was a non-event that has for so many years been an event. Today, it was just another day.

Goodbye, Again

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

I don’t say goodbye well. It isn’t that I can’t; it’s that I will always remember. I’ll remember the place and the clothes I was wearing. I’ll remember the time of day. Now, it seems that 2026 is a year to let go of the old and welcome the new. It is a bittersweet time of my life.

And so it is with grief. We move forward into new discoveries. What I once struggled to part with is now back in a decade of dust just like the dust that a car makes on an unpaved road.

Last night I said a difficult goodbye to a leadership position that I’ve held for eight years. I’m saying goodbye because I’m moving forward. I’m headed into an unknown, and hopefully good, place where I’ll serve others in new ways. Goodbye was hard, and after I said the words and left the meeting, I sat on my wonderful bed, and I let the tears come. It seems as if clearing the battlement, and realizing that I don’t need to engage the iceberg as I once did, enabled the tears I once might have not shed to come freely.  

It seems to me that, like the seasons, I’ve moved in time and understanding. I now have the option of questioning what I’m ready for as I move along my new path of life.

As I think back on the winter of grief, tears form, and I recall the pain of wondering if the tears and the heartache would ever end. I listened to the voices of others who said that, yes, the tears would change, and the quality of the tears would be different. Then I became one of those voices. The day came when I noticed that the tears had faded into the past. “Goodbye, I love you” could be said in a different way. That was the season of autumn, with its rich colors and flavors. It was a time of acceptance and quiet movement. Autumn speaks to my heart in many ways, and this season of grief has spoken well, and I suppose that I’ll visit this season in new ways and different times of my life.

I’m entering into a new spring! I’ve been here before. This time around it isn’t the budding of new hope: it’s the beauty and surprise of the unknown that will welcome in a place of exploration and gently move me into a summer of exploration and new life. I’ll gladly engage with this new journey! Summers are all about the work of the journey. Once again, I’ve crossed Styx. I stand on this expectant shore ready to welcome the spring and summer that will unfold for me.

I realize that the seasons of grief are not organized with one following the other. These seasons take us to where we need them to carry us, and the work that we do on our grief journey determines the season we arrive in. There are multiple seasons! 

I light my scented candle that brings the scent of water into the room. I realize I’m being called to a place along the shoreline where the river pilot waits for me. He ushers me on board the sleekest of sleek boats. Run the water with this! Whoa! I know my friend the pilot and I will navigate new waters with a new confidence. I’m sure I’ll put to shore in different seasons and head inland to explore. The pilot asks me if I remember that first running of the water. I do, and I was so scared. That old boat is somewhere off in a past that has faded into so many new discoveries. I believe the best one is that ten years ago I didn’t know I could do what I’ve done.

As I cast off into the water, I’m finding out how to welcome the new. A few years ago, I said a goodbye at Bracelet Bay in Wales. I spread ashes and cried, and a friend said a prayer. Jon’s ashes spoke to me of the place where I needed to spread them. The fine dust of life went into the water that September day. Wales has been a part of this grief process, and soon I’ll be within view of it in March as I take on a new task in my life.

I haven’t been too anxious to move things along at a rapid pace. I’ve needed to learn what the river holds, and I’ve needed to allow the gentle process of healing to glide me along the path that it holds for me.

Grief is about tears, mourning our losses, and accepting new futures. Grief is about learning to say goodbye in a thankful manner for what the journey has taught us. Grief is leaning to welcome what is new graciously.