Unpacking

We've just returned from a long overdue and much needed time away at the beach. I spent most of the day unpacking and getting myself organized for the upcoming week. I decided unpacking isn't as much fun as packing...I guess it is all of that anticipation of fun times to be had, that makes packing for a trip so much fun.

This time unpacking was even more dreadful since we have come home to face a rather difficult week ahead.

I am about to embark on yet another leg of our journey this week. Except,this time, I'm not sure what I'll need and what I can leave behind. This journey, one of grief, is very different from every other trip I've ever taken. To begin with, it was unplanned. My journey through grief began with an empty suitcase. My husband describes our early days of grief like the scene from Monsters INC. where Sully and Mike are pushed through the door into an unknown place. Unexpected. Unprepared. Shocked. I've needed to figure out what to pack and what to leave behind with each step of the way. The trip hasn't been pleasant either.

What few others realize is that grief changes a person forever. It changes every fiber of a person. Grief can change everything and resets "the syllabus to life" that most us align ourselves to as we navigate through our lifetime. The belief in most things that we ever knew to be true are on shifting sand...I have been on a road of self discovery ever since. I've been deciding all along, with each peak and valley, each twist and turn, with each new day that I survive, what I want to take on the road of this new life and what I want to leave behind.

Always attempting my best to stay on a positive track of thought-

"Life isn't about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself"

-George Bernard Shawn

So as the second year without Jeremy fades into the history of my heart and soul, I will begin the dawn of the first day of the new year hopeful that perhaps the worst season of my grief will be behind me. I survived. I am hopeful that the hard work and the most painful work has been done and that lighter days are soon on the horizon.