I am beginning to think that the common bond we all share, is grief. Each one of us understands the pain of grief. We have loved and we have lost. From our pet goldfish, that first crush, a competition, someone we've loved and someone we didn't get time to love enough. We get weighted down, sandbagged, remembering the pain of a childhood gone bad, our bodies taken from us by abuse and rape, the loss of family to disease, denial and dementia. Everyone has experienced grief.
Maybe how we move on and deal with our grief is a determining factor in our quality of life, success, failure, happy or sad. Those...idealistic ones who say, "it happened, get over it" and fail to feel or express their grief or to acknowledge it in others, carry a heavy, toxic load and do a disservice to others. If I don't feel my grief, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist...it just means I'm denying myself healthy expression of an emotion that ingested and submerged, destroys me from the inside out.
Each one of us "feels" in different degrees. The loss of grandma may mean little to one child, whereas a second child is devestated. The pet goldfish meant nothing to Adam, but everything to Eve. The slap across the face, from mother, barely fazed Peter, but Paul still carries the pain of the scar. No one can judge anothers pain. We need to learn to respect what we feel. And what the person sitting next to us has experienced.
What makes us human is our ability to feel. Why do some choose not to?
To be part of humanity, I feel we are called, predetermined, hereditarily gifted with the inherent desire to help one another. Each feels grief...it's a given. We are aware of each other. If we choose to look, we can see others pain. The common understanding, the common bond...we are here to help each other through grief and loss, if we choose.
Maybe I realize it, now, because I'm willing to feel all the grief that I refused to believe existed. Maybe I believe that each and every person that reads this, understands even a bit of what I'm saying.
We all seek love. We have all experienced grief. We have all loved and lost.
Let's get honest. Let's be real.
