Struggle to Affirm Reality
– Stage 10 -

“We finally begin to affirm reality. Please note that we do not say that the final stage is, ‘We become our old selves again.’ When we go through any significant grief experience we come out of it as different people.”
- Granger Westberg – from his book “Good Grief”

This is so true. We will never be exactly the same again.

There is a scar. Death has changed us.

It can make us “bitter or better”. So much of that depends on how we approach this grief journey of ours. We must face this difficult task and do the grief work.

Remember the bereavement process does not follow an exact timeline or pattern.

The “first’s” can and will be hard.
The good; birthdays, holidays, anniversaries
The negative “year” anniversaries too; learning of the disease, entering the hospital, the day they died.

We are reaching a phase of resolution. We will still have times of pain and bereavement, we will still cry, but we can begin to start to “grow” forward, to make a new life, forever changed, but one well worth living!

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