Happy New Year

2020 is coming to an end. For many of us, it has unfortunately been a year of trials and sadness. Many of our personal lives have been shattered and we are or have been struggling to pick up the pieces and find any kind of hope to help us go forward just as the world around us has been dramatically altered by pandemic.

Although we can’t see an end to many of the things that have seemingly collapsed around us, I want to remind everyone who reads this that especially for the bereaved, time is our friend, it is always moving on to the next moment, the next day or month or year. And in each instant, we have the chance to find a bit more hope, a bit more healing and the ability to learn another lesson in our journey toward wellness. 

While no one can see how it will all work out, especially on the larger scale, It is my intent here to inject a little hope from my own experience and that of others who also are traveling on their grief journeys. I have seen that out of the darkest days of early grief, if we only hang on, learn in what ever way we can to hold to hope and take care of ourselves as well as we can, that with time, usually in small increments, sometimes too small to notice, we can go forward, we can grow, we can begin the healing process and gradually, learn to stand again, to become functional in a new way and rise to live again.

I am an optimist at heart. I believe that if we are willing to put in the hard work of rebuilding our lives and recreating ourselves, we can find a place of peace where we can live and go forward.  I believe we can build a new life that honors our loved ones, honors the life we shared and the love we will always share. I believe that we can find a place where the memories of our lives together change from the sadness of grief to golden memory and become a celebration of our time together and all it contained. And I believe somewhere along the line we can and will find our grief turning to acceptance and our pain become something we can live with and like the Phoenix, we will rise out of the ashes of our grief and we will learn to fly again into the light.

Thank you to all those who have read what we’ve posted here and who have allowed me to share my grief journey and the lessons learned along the way. Hopefully you have found some help here to aid you in your own grief journey as you move forward in a positive way. I hope that you have been able to find some measure of hope and healing through this narrative. 

Happy New Year to you all,

In Hope and Healing,

Howard and Andi

12/31/2020