{"id":2000,"date":"2015-05-28T03:02:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T03:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/?p=2000"},"modified":"2016-11-28T04:20:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T04:20:11","slug":"what-if-my-grief-was-my-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/what-if-my-grief-was-my-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"What if my grief was my gold?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Grief…We’re told to get over it, get through it, get to the end of it or to get a grip on it (or ourselves) should we veer off in uncontrollable crying, outbursts or other outpourings of overpowering emotions, thoughts and behaviours.<\/p>\n<p>Same with depression. \u00a0Dull it, deny it or deaden it with medication.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #99cc00;\"><strong>But what if grief and depression were our nuggets of gold and the making of us, <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #99cc00;\"><strong>rather than rubble and the breaking of us?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>And what if the grief that comes from death, disability, divorce, abuse, infertility, miscarriages or any other changes in our lives…was actually a gift, nor a grievous mistake.<\/p>\n<p>When we’re grieving, what’s really important in life suddenly becomes more crystal clear, when previously we may have sat in confusion or lack of clarity. \u00a0 Regret, lost time, sadness and unfulfilled dreams make what we want, crave or would die for all the more obvious. \u00a0In fact, grief can <span style=\"color: #99cc00;\">re-ignite a lost spark<\/span> within us and spur us on to live life how we would like it, not how we’ve been living it to date.<\/p>\n<p>When we’re grieving, our emotional state is in overwhelm and exaggerated – not falsely or wrongly, but in authenticity of who we really are and what we are really feeling. \u00a0Is that not powerful when it comes to the possible potency of our creative juices? \u00a0Imagine the art, the music and <span style=\"color: #99cc00;\">creative gifts<\/span> that have been, and will continue to be unwrapped in the state and grace of grief.<\/p>\n<p>And in grief, who comes to comfort us? \u00a0It is in those early moments, we know who are <span style=\"color: #99cc00;\">true friends<\/span> are and their qualities that make them special. \u00a0Surrounded by people who care in that initial time in grief is priceless. Surrounding ourselves more long-term after that initial period of grief where people rally around, is also a gift, because who we formerly associated with, may not be ideally who we would choose to travel the rest of our life with.<\/p>\n<p>And what of the <span style=\"color: #99cc00;\">learning and<\/span>\u00a0<span style=\"color: #99cc00;\">growth<\/span> that has come from journeying through grief? \u00a0What have we learned? \u00a0What has this experience opened us up to that we would never have experienced or dived into before? \u00a0What new interesting avenues has it taken us down? \u00a0What judgement have we learned to put aside?<\/p>\n<p>And often the gift of grief is that it takes us beyond ourselves into a different realm of existence, a different realm of <span style=\"color: #99cc00;\">faith<\/span> or a brand new relationship with something greater than ourselves, because we may feel un-resourced without that extra “force” within us. Our spiritual fortitude is tested. \u00a0Our inner strength and resourcefulness is given wings. And even in those moments of complete devastation, pain and agony, we dig deep within ourselves like never before.<\/p>\n<p>The gold is in the grief.<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grief…We’re told to get over it, get through it, get to the end of it or to get a grip on it (or ourselves) should we veer off in uncontrollable…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,165,116,394],"tags":[219,35,48,93,149,119,150,73],"class_list":["post-2000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-well-being","category-spirituality","category-womens-life-changes-and-transitions","category-written-articles","tag-death","tag-depression","tag-disability","tag-exhaustion","tag-grief","tag-infertility","tag-sadness","tag-stress"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/grieving-woman-art.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2005,"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000\/revisions\/2005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janellefletcher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}