Today as the rain falls against my windows and the world seems quiet and at rest I find myself considering choices. Choices already made and those yet to come. They say you shouldn’t make major life decisions in the first year of your grieving process. I’m not entirely sure who “they” are. Experts of some sort or another I suppose. Ones I no doubt looked to when counseling people along their grief journeys. It makes sense if you think about it. We aren’t necessarily in our right minds the experts warn, to make these important life decisions. Maybe the experts themselves made major life decisions in their own first year of grieving. Perhaps they quit a job that had become less of a passion and more of a chore, or maybe they ended a relationship that no longer brought them light. Maybe they came to regret these decisions and so then decided it was likely best to wait through the grief some before enacting these new life plans. Seems logical, sensible even.
Or maybe they understand that those major life decisions bring with them yet more losses to grieve. And they know that the weight of grief upon grief is just more than any one person should have to bear. They know too, that every single loss we experience brings us through a review of sorts of every other loss we have lived through. That’s an awful deep amount of grief to carry to then willingly add on to by our choices.
I can’t help but wonder though, as I said, I am sitting here contemplating these things. If major life decisions are in fact the very ones we ought to be making in our grieving. Not to wait because we can’t tolerate more or that we’ve lost the run of ourselves, but in truth, it is in our grief that there is a kind of clarity unlike that we might have otherwise known. Grief breaks us open to our very core, and isn’t that the most authentic place there is? It is where we find out truest selves after all. What better place can there possibly be to make choices from? Choices from truth can never bring regrets. It’s the place we all strive to live from, so it makes sense to choose for our lives from this place.
I know, maybe not everyone can or should make these difficult decisions from grief, but shouldn’t we at least consider that it’s possible we could make the best decisions we have ever made for our lives from here? It isn’t easy to be in and live from our truest authentic beings so if it takes grief to strip away everything else but truth then so be it. Truth. What better place to make decisions for how, where, with whom we will live this one life we are given? Truth =Love, Grief=Love. It’s that simple and that profound.
It is worth considering. In fact, I think it’s imperative to consider, regardless of any final choice you end up making. Wait, or not. Two paths to choose from and I believe that whatever your choice if you make it from a place of truth, grief, love, it will be the right one for you. And that is all that matters.
I’m curious to hear what you think? I hope you’ll leave me a comment, send an email, engage in a dialogue about this grieving. And until the next in the series On Grieving…take good care.
