Grief and change

If you have not already found it yourself, I highly recommend Molly Piper's blog.

She has great things to say on a number of different topics, however, the most helpful one is her writing about the stillbirth of her second child, Felicity. She has done a very helpful series titled 'How to help your grieving friend'.

I link to her today because of the post she just put up about how the events of the last 2 years have completely changed them:

One of the things I’ve been grieving this last year is simply that I used to be a happy person. It used to be that my days were primarily happy, with the occasional interruption of melancholy or difficulty. For the last 22 months, the opposite has been mainly true.

One of my good friends uses the phrase “secondary losses.” I think that’s what this year has been—a whole bunch of secondary losses. The loss of innocence. The loss of happiness. The loss of youth.The loss of simplicity. And when you experience those secondary losses, you grieve...

So if you’re a mom like me, living without one (or more) of your children, take heart that this is indeed one of the hardest things you will ever live through. But that also means that you lived.

She has some really good things to say both to those of us who are grieving, and those of us walking beside them.