I have written a lot about grief for this blog over the past five years. Here are my grief posts from oldest to newest, so you can follow my grief journey in sequence without having to search for the posts. Although the first year’s blog posts were published in Grief: The Great Yearning, most of the writing in that book was never published online. Those journal entries and letters to my deceased life mate/soul mate were never intended for publication. In fact, I’d never intended to make my grief public at all except for the brief hints in earliest posts, but when I learned how important it was to talk about grief, I gradually opened up on this blog. If you’d like to read my most private thoughts during those first agonizing months, you can find them in my book Grief: The Great Yearning.
- Funeral Blues
- Remembering
- Grief Is It’s Own Country
- A Tribute to a Fallen Mate
- Death For Dummies
- What to Say to Someone Who is Grieving
- Baby Steps
- Grief Update
- The Problem With Grief
- I Am a One-Month Grief Survivor
- Misconceptions About Grief
- I Am a Two-Month Grief Survivor
- Tempest Tossed
- Yes. I Can.
- The Long and Winding Road of Grief
- Twelve Lonely Weeks
- Staying in the Moment
- I Am a Three-Month Grief Survivor
- Grief Has It’s Own Logic
- Rewinding My Life
- Nor All Your Tears . . .
- Grief’s Milestones
- Write for the Dead Whom Thou Didst Love
- Comes the Dawn
- I Am a Four-Month Grief Survivor
- Grief is Not a Medical Disorder
- One Woman’s Grief
- Sorry For Your Loss
- In Grief, There Will Not Be Closure
- I Am a Five-Month Grief Survivor
- Sucker Punched by Grief
- The Healing Power of Stories
- Is Twenty-Five Weeks a Long Time or a Little Time?
- I Am a Six-Month Grief Survivor
- Is Hate a Stage of Grief?
- Many Shades of Grief
- Grief: Cleaning Up the Past
- I Am a Seven-Month Grief Survivor
- Greening the Desert
- The Simple Truth
- How to Respond to “How Are You?”
- Desert Revelation
- Healing the Split In Ourselves
- Grief: All Things Considered . . .
- Grief: Denying Denial
- There’s Plenty of Grief to Spread Around
- Grateful Even in Grief
- I Am an Eight-Month Grief Survivor
- Owing His Memory?
- Grief: Loose Cannon on Deck
- Let It Be . . . Me
- Letting It Be
- The Gift of Possibilities
- I Am a Nine-Month Grief Survivor
- Building Hopes and Creating Dreams
- New Year, New Beginning?
- Grief Takes as Long as It Takes
- Grief: The Great Yearning
- Grief Update — Throwing a Tantrum
- Trying to Relight My Life
- I Am a Ten-Month Grief Survivor
- Advice to the Newly Bereft
- The First Terrible Anniversaries of Grief
- Surprised by Grief
- I Am an Eleven-Month Grief Survivor
- The Ferris Wheel of Life
- Standing Tearfully on the Cusp of . . .
- Going Along for the Ride
- Grief and Remembrance
- Grief: Counting Down to the First Anniversary
- Keeping Vigil
- I Am a Twelve-Month Grief Survivor
- Grief Update: A Yearning as Deep as the Black Canyon
- Grief: Blindsided by Lilacs
- I Am a Thirteen-Month Grief Survivor
- Grief Update: Looking For Adventure and Whatever Comes My Way
- I Am a Fourteen-Month Grief Survivor
- Surviving a New Stage of Grief
- Driving My Grief
- A Great Love Story
- I Got Kicked Out Of My Grief Support Group
- Grief Group Update
- I Thought I Was Through With Grief, But Grief Wasn’t Through With Me
- Post-Traumatic Tress Syndrome
- If Cowboys Had Wept . . .
- Multi-Asking
- The Silent Language of Grief
- A Search for Meaninglessness
- Following Grief Wherever It Leads
- 500 Days of Grief
- What to Say When You Remember a Word You Couldn’t Remember
- S.O.S. — Dance Therapy
- Letter to a Grieving Friend
- Putting a H.A.L.T. to Grief
- Grief is NOT Self-Indulgent
- Maiden/Mother/Crone — The Mythic Stages of a Woman’s Life
- The Soundtrack of Our Lives
- Learning How To Occupy Myself
- Codependency or Interdependency?
- Proving to Myself That I’m Real
- Life Goes On Even if the Whole Thing is Flawed
- Saturday, My Sadder Day
- I Am Not Grieving Inappropriately
- The Symphony of a Life Gone By
- Hurrying Through Grief To See What is On the Other Side
- Is It Necessary to Want Something?
- Grief Bursts
- System Restore for Our Lives
- Grief Doesn’t Take a Holiday
- Gathering Patience for the Lonely Years Ahead
- Grief: Defragmenting and Making Room for Something Wonderful
- Grief’s Growing Pains
- Burning My “If Only”s Behind Me
- Getting a Grip on Grief
- The Awesome and Awesomely Terrible State of Grief
- Growing into the Woman I Am to Become
- Grief: Counting the Days, Weeks, Months
- Ten Things I Know to Be Absolutely Certain
- Rethinking Ways to Think About Grief — Part I
- Rethinking Ways to Think About Grief — Part I
- Rethinking Ways to Think About Grief — Part II
- What Do You Say to Someone Who is Grieving at Christmas?
- I Don’t Feel Your Pain
- Grief is a Gift
- Thinking Through My Fingers
- What Grief Taught Me About Love
- Christmas and Grief: Creating New Traditions
- Grief Update: Twenty-one Months
- Grieving the End of This Year
- The Power of Grief
- Waiting for the End of the Year
- After the Waiting Comes the Dread
- Starting From Scratch
- Life’s Little Bonsai
- Writing a Book I Didn’t Know I Was Writing
- Grief: Looking at the World Through a Camera Lens
- A New Pattern of Grief
- The Five Major Challenges We Face During the Second Year of Grief
- The Conundrum of Grief
- First Look at the Cover for My Grief Book!
- Appalling Remarks People Say to Those Who Are Grieving
- Grief: Yearning for a World that Makes Sense
- There is Something Totally Bizarre About Grief
- Grief: Feeling The Absence
- Grief: Being Ripped in Two
- Meeting the Challenges of the Second Year of Grief
- Grief: Overflowing Into the Empty Places
- A Day for the Broken-Hearted
- Is Irritation & Frustration a New Stage of Grief?
- Feeling Small
- Grief Update — Twenty-Three Months
- Counting Down to the Second Anniversary of Grief (1)
- The Final Resting Place for My Grief
- Grief Means Never Having to Say I’m Sorry
- Passing the Test of Grief
- Grief: The Great Yearning Has Been Published!
- Introduction to “Grief: The Great Yearning”
- Grief: Love or Codependency?
- The Shoulder Season of Grief
- Dealing With Grief After a Loved One’s Long-Term Illness
- Falling into Grief
- What is Life? What is Death? And What do Such Questions Have to do With Grief?
- Counting Down to the Second Anniversary of Grief (2)
- Anniversaries of Grief
- Still Confounded by Grief
- Grief — Two Years Minus Five Hours
- Two Years of Grief
- Two Years and One Day of Grief
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 3
- When Grief Has You
- Grief and Our Lizard Brain
- The Internet is My Tranquilizer
- What Type of Person Experiences Profound Grief?
- Facing My Dreads
- What To Do (And What Not to Do) When Someone is Grieving
- Untaming Me and Embracing My Inner Savage
- Being Open to the Possibility of Joy
- Grief Update — Two Years and One Month
- A Different Level of Sadness
- The Necessity For Grief
- Review of Grief: The Great Yearning
- “Golly gee what have you done to me?”
- Why “Grief: The Great Yearning” is Important
- Where Do I Belong?
- Wondering About Life And Death And The Meaning Of It All
- Grieving the Nothings
- Weeping For Those Who Are Newly Born Into The World Of Grief
- When You Lose the Person Who Connects You to the World, What do You Become?
- There Are Worse Things Than Not Being Happy
- The Two-Year Anniversary of the Worst Day of My Life
- Grief: Haunted by the Hard Questions
- Learning to Deal With the Real World
- New Steps on the Journey Through Grief
- Waiting for My New Life to Begin
- “I don’t worry about a thing because I know nothing is going to be all right.”
- Two Years, Two Months, Two Weeks, And Two Days of Grief
- Grappling with Death
- Desert Revelation: Dealing with Life on My Own
- Dreaming of the Dead
- I Am Crying, Forever Dying
- A Credo to Live By
- Grief: Finally Grateful
- Grief: The Twenty-Seventh Twenty-Seventh
- Life, Grief, and Entropy
- Lingering Effects of Grief
- Putting Grief into Perspective
- Celebrating My Independence
- Waiting. Always Waiting.
- What is the Point of Being Me?
- Pat is Prologue
- Floundering in a Sea of Sorrow
- Grief and the Double Standard of Love
- Upsurges in Sadness Are Like Shortness of Breath After Exercise
- Trying to Fill The Void Of His Absence With Remembered Joy
- Grief Update: Going on Alone
- My Dirty Little Secret
- Searching for New Loves
- Being Where I am Supposed to Be
- Insanity, Alchemy, and Me
- A Gift From the Universe
- Portraying Grief Correctly
- Reaching a Bridge in My Life
- Becoming Who I Need to Be
- A Kinder, Gentler Grief
- Echoes of Grief
- Yet Another Saturday, My Sadder Day
- There is No Journey Through Grief
- Using the Whole Sphere of my Being
- Grief Update — Thirty Months of Survival
- Grief: The Great Yearning — Day 197
- No One to Do Nothing With
- Meeting the Challenges of the Third Year of Grief
- Why I Write About My Grief
- The Wonder of Us
- Being is Reason Enough for Living
- Opening Myself to the Power of the Universe
- Grief Rant
- Grief: The Great Yearning
- Double Whammy of Grief
- The Surprising Power of Grief
- Today Is a Good Day and I Am Feeling Fine
- Thirty-Two Months of Grief
- Death and Dying: Good-bye Experiences
- Living Each Day We Are Given
- Allowing Myself to Dream
- After Grief: Crashing the Party of Life
- 1000 Days of Grief
- One Thousand and One Days of Grief
- A Child of Grief
- All Right With Death?
- Grief: New Year’s Day and Beyond
- Believing Impossible Things
- The Half-Life of Grief
- Is Grief a Medical Disorder or a Part of Life?
- Grief and the Empty Timeline of Death
- 30 Second Book Trailer For GRIEF: THE GREAT YEARNING
- The Sad Song of Grief
- Reality and Truth, Fantasy and Lies
- Thirty-Four Months of Grief
- The Doors of Grief
- Saying Good-bye
- Happy New Month’s Eve!
- My New New Year
- Finding a New Life that Fits Properly and Looks Good
- The Dower House of Grief
- Becoming the Vibrant Person You Will Remember Being
- A Palliative for the Brokenhearted
- The Mythic Stages of Grief
- Grief Is Unique to Each Person
- It Takes Courage to Grieve
- Grief at Thirty-Five Months
- The Waning of Grief
- When Grief Comes Calling
- Grief and Lingering Feelings of Resentment
- Figuring Out Where to Go From Here
- Taking a Leap Into the Impossible
- A Thousand Miles From My Cool Green Home
- Living Light and Free
- The Eve of My Third Anniversary of Grief
- Three Years of Grief
- Facing My New Year With Courage and Wisdom
- Grieving for the Dead
- Grief Update
- My Own True Grit
- Embracing Life in the Face of Death
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 23
- Nothing is Trivial When Dealing With Grief
- The Surprise and Sadness of Grief’s Journey
- Thirty-Seven Months of Grief
- My Aching Breaking Heart
- I Don’t Want Your Sympathy
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 43
- A New Permutation Of Grief?
- The Three-Year Anniversary of the Worst Day of My Life
- Dead Man Walking
- Letter to the Dead
- Three Years and 68 days of Grief
- Grief Work
- Dealing with the Ashes
- Waiting Quietly For an April Time
- My Punctuated Life of Equilibrium
- The Unchanging Face of Grief
- The Loosening Spiral of Grief
- Is Our Grief Necessary to the Dead?
- A New and Embarrassing Stage of Grief
- Dreaming Time is Here
- Grieving For Grief
- Figuring Things Out
- To Whom Do We Owe Loyalty?
- Saying Happy Birthday to the Dead
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 112
- Grief: “It was a long time ago.”
- Three Years, Three Months, Three Weeks, and Three Days of Grief
- No More Saturday my Sadder Day
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 115
- Camping on the Edge of Life
- Is the Unwitnessed Life Worth Living?
- My Tree Bark Heart
- It Is What It Is
- Negativity Is in the Ear of the Beholder
- Grief Update: Forty-One Months
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 159
- A Few Moments in an Unsettling Dream
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 165
- How Careless of Me to Have Lost Him
- Salad Days
- Grief and the Loss of Identity
- Being Comfortable With Who I Was And Who I Am
- Life is a Matter of Habit
- Grief: Losing Your Grip
- Everything Happens For the Best — Oh, Yeah?
- I Am a Three-and-a-Half-Year Grief Survivor
- Grief is Exhausting
- In the Company of Married Women
- If You Are Sick Of Hearing About My Loss . . .
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 197
- Do the Dead Miss Us?
- Life After the Death of a Soul Mate
- And So Grief Goes . . .
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 214
- A Leftover From Grief
- The Return of the Sad Saturday
- Taking “G” Things With Gratitude
- Grief: Yes, There is Hope
- Wise Women of Cyberspace
- Gifts Worth Treasuring
- Resuming My Lonely March Into the Future
- Grief and Imagining the Unimaginable
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 288
- A Retrospective of Grief
- To Everyone Who Has Shared This Day With Me
- Counting Down to Four Years of Grief
- You Don’t Get Over Grief
- Challenges of the Fourth Year of Grief
- Patterns of Grief
- Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 359
- Small Losses and Great Losses
- Terrible Anniversaries of Grief
- Fourth Anniversary of Grief
- Lilacs For Remembrance
- Spending Too Much Time in Shuttered Rooms
- Things That Will Always Make Me Cry
- Grief’s Strange Blessing
- Grief Update: Four Years and Four Months
- Shredding the Past
- Moving Energy Around
- For All of You Who Are Experiencing Grief
- Dancing My Way Out of Grief
- Being in Two Places at Once
- Promises to the Dying
- Is It True that Grief Has Limits Whereas Apprehension Has None?
- Letter to the Dead
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 366
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 376
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 378
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 383
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 386
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 409
- Too Many Losses
- Grieving in the Desert
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 423
- Stressed to My Limits
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 432
- Christmas Eve With the Living
- Tears. Again.
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 434
- We Are Not Our Stuff
- As Long As We Are Alive, We Are Alive
- Grief: The Great Learning, Day 435
- Grief and a Need for Adventure
- Four Years and Eleven Months of Grief
- What It’s All About. Maybe.
- Glad about Grief
- I Am a Five-Year Grief Survivor
- Fan Mail Brings Me Grief
- The Unending Process of Dying
- The Courage to Remember
- Empty Rooms
- Haunted by the Specter of Empty Rooms
- Letting Go
- Finding a Place For Our Dead
- Settling Into Unsettledness
- Upsurge of Unbelonging
- Wednesday’s Child
- Grief, Adventure, Car Update
- Grief Has No Timetable
- Late Night Loneliness
- The Difference Between Today and Some Future Tomorrow
- What if the Past Isn’t Dead?
- Melancholy Lady
- Rainbow-Colored Mysteries
- Life Shouldn’t Be So Hard
- The Miracle of Grief
- From Bruising to Blessing
- Grief, the Internet, and Other Unpolitic Matters
- Getting Used to the Way Things Become
- Pain, Cosmic and Otherwise
- A Widow’s March
- Grief Is a Process that Keeps on Taking
January 5, 2014 at 7:18 pm
It is 2014 and a time for resolutions and goals, as you have noted in some of your other posts. A time for putting forth a new slate. There is one thing I have always said I would do (for the last three years), and haven’t done. So I am doing it now. Here goes:
I just want to say a big THANK YOU for all your posts on grief. They have been my life-saver. It is as if I saw my journal being written right in front of my eyes by someone else. Every word echoed what I thought. Every feeling you felt was what I felt. It was as if you were here, probing my soul and my brain, and then, as my scribe, wrote it down.
My wife (my soulmate, as you say– which is true of my partner) died in January 2010. In the flailings of my anguish, I looked around the internet for some words to make sense of it all. Then in early April 2010, I came upon the first of your blogs on grief (which you had started in March), and have been following them, albeit in the shadows, ever since.
There was not a word that wasn’t true to my experience. Every opinion, every attitude, every shout of anger, every cry of sadness, every sense of loss, every desire to hang on, every word of grief described me at that moment. Even now your words continue to speak to (and about) me (e.g. I joined an online dating site about a month before you did, and even there, your opinions were what I thought — how hilarious!)
Your words were what brought me this far. In the beginning, I felt alone when all my relationships disappeared, as my friends understandably didn’t know what to do with my grief. But there was one voice out there in the universe that somehow knew my very thoughts. Your words made me feel– not alone. And for those blogs, I want to give you my heartfelt thanks. Truly.
January 5, 2014 at 7:36 pm
You made me cry for both of us and the anguish we have endured. I’m glad my words helped you, as your words now help me, making me realize all that pain wasn’t in vain. And oh, how interesting that we joined an online dating site within an month of each other! People say grief is individual, but I have found that in many cases, it follows a pattern, and connects people. Thank you for writing. Best of luck as we both journey into our futures.