We may have lost loved ones, a job, a house, a way of life. We may have lost intangibles like the feeling of security, safety, and a sense of direction for our life. Grief takes many forms, and is different for each person. But it doesn’t let us ignore it, and somehow we learn to move on with it, sometimes enveloping us, other times quietly at our side, affecting our lives until we accept the new “normal.”
Losing a job, a career, a business, creates a grief of its own. It creates a huge void in our life. We may have lost the anchor for our dreams and the framework for going about our daily life. Sadly, there are no funerals, no cemeteries for buried dreams and closed businesses.
“As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float, stay alive….
“In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath…Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart...and you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.”
—GSnow, Untitled Comment, reddit.com