This may sound trite and obvious, but it's a powerful healing tool. O'NEILL: Like doing a LIFE KIT for NPR on grief? Give yourself the space and the time to heal through these waves of grief.
GSnow: And I have come to recognize that the biggest gifts are the ones to somebody else, but through you. Amory Sivertson: Can you take us back to late 2016? T. : I'll send you guys a photo of it. She just wants to do her best to be in control of how she remembers him. I'm asked quite often when working with grief if the person is grieving "the right way", often feeling like somehow they aren't – because it hurts, because it's confusing, because it STILL hurts, because sometimes it's not there at all, because people say you should be devastated and maybe you're not. In the Christian tradition, those who are". O'NEILL: Understanding what might derail your healthy grieving can also lead you to healing those prior wounds, which is another transformative role a walk with grief offers us. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. I am on my way to being independent again. But for the purpose of clarity in this post, I'm going to focus on grief and loss from the death of a loved one. Maybe This Will Help Someone - Loss of a Spouse, Partner, or Significant Other. Morgan McLaverty, a world traveler that has taken roots in southern New Jersey where her husband Sean was born and raised. It is knowing that an unseen wave of grief can catch us off guard and crash over us as if out on the open sea.
The questions of why and how are less pressing than the reality that is your lungs filling with water now. Yet don't be surprised if restoration makes you feel uncomfortable. Grief is like a shipwrecks. There's a quote therapists often reference when working with grief that discusses grief as a shipwreck. T. : For example, we'd opened a Verizon account together. STEPHANIE O'NEILL, HOST: We're all going through a lot of grief these days. She's now moved out of the shoebox room and into the bigger bedroom in her New York apartment.
O'NEILL: So let's recap. As weird as it sounds, we actually want to find a place where we can be present with it rather than be in resistance to it. It was unpredictable, frightening and unknowable. And, when a woman on the Reddit website was deeply mourning the loss of her best friend and seeking support by chatting with strangers, a commenter who called himself "old man" wrote this piece about how grief comes in waves. You can find those at And if you love LIFE KIT and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at the If you've got a good tip about getting through grief or otherwise, leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at This episode was produced by Meghan Keane who's also the managing producer. May Spotlight Film: Shipwreck. "The first discovery of the shipwreck is that we have a higher capacity for pain than we ever could have imagined before we lost, before we failed, before we suffered…The surprise on the other side of the shipwreck is that, while your capacity for pain improved far beyond our wildest reckoning, now you have a capacity to feel everything deeper. And then I walked over to him and that's when I noticed his foot, and I thought he tripped and blacked out or something. And actually this whole story has to do with technology, because the way that my partner and I met — we met on, back when there was no app for it or anything.
They want to know if T. 's partner had been doing drugs. Adriel Booker, an author, advocate, and provider of miscarriage and loss resources in Sydney, Australia, so eloquently writes of her experience: "They say that grief comes in waves. He lets that one passage he wrote eight years ago do the talking for him. T. : And then I heard his mother scream like I've never heard anyone scream. Maybe it's something physical. It is just this… grief. He was like, I'm here to talk about the flowers. She was proud of herself. Thanks for listening. It was no longer just a quote about grief for me, it was an experience that I felt in my bones. DANIEL: That's a perfect example. Grief comes in waves. He says he responds to every single message.
It was just me writing to him or her, I don't know which. The anticipation of the ten year anniversary has undoubtedly had an effect on me, and I often find myself questioning if it is normal. Shot on iPhone 11 Pro camera during the pandemic lockdown in Los Angeles, Shipwreck is a lyrical portrait of a young girl navigating grief, loss, and sense of identity. "But man is not made for defeat. And somebody said, "Oh, you can go to r/Widowers, " which has really been a saving grace for me in a lot of ways. There are just tasks you'll need to get through in order to heal and to keep your emotional house tidy. Grief is like an ocean poem. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Ben: The ambulance heads to the hospital. Anxiety and exhaustion made concentrating on anything beyond work really hard to do. Takeaway three - grief needs expression. And that's all restoration.
Lennon was born still at thirty one weeks and five days. I was out of work and I had lost all confidence in myself and my abilities, felt lost and with no direction. Are we to take him seriously, roll our eyes at his soppy poetry, or are we meant to find him funny? There are people who lost partners years ago, and there are people who lost partners hours ago. The woman who suffers in silence is like a statue who sits patiently for eternity, and whose feelings never falter or change. Somewhere people get the idea that "this thing is mine" and will not let it or them go. Lisa Cole is an award winning writer and director. There's also a thing called delayed grief. It's like, what are you talking about? But, Daniel says, there is a limit. And occasionally, one of these waves hits her shores. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. If you'd like some guidance with the grief waves, I would love to help.
I'm just a user account. And I was like, "OK, that's fine, sounds good. " Healing and peace is not linear with grief. So come on in and sit with me, and I will be your friend. Amory: GSnow's a teacher, and one day he saw a post on Reddit from a user who said they were 17 and their best friend had just died.
You can unsubscribe at any time. You are capable of a depth of empathy and compassion that would have been unthinkable before…And from this new-found capacity for pain, for sorrow, for torment, for agony, for endless waves of grief, comes the biggest surprise of them all—your new-found capacity for joy. As a ship far out in the deep ocean in a raging storm, we must learn to adjust our focus, direction, or heading and how to right the ship we will sail upon throughout our lives. T. : One payment stops February, one payment stops March, one stops April. And I started doing chest compressions as directed by the operator on the phone. But, for reasons that T. still doesn't fully understand, they didn't come up with any even as the day dragged on. And share your story with trusted friends or family who get it. It is really great advice, and I hope everyone gets a chance to read it. Despite that, we want to hold them or keep them. So you make meaning out of your life.