Three Things I’ve Learned Two Years into my Grief

And happy first birthday to Melinda's Grief Corner!

Lovely MGC reader - this newsletter is coming out 8 days before the two year mark of my dad’s death. It goes without saying that I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. The first year was a lot of shock and feeling like it was all surreal. Almost like I felt I was living inside of someone else’s nightmare.

Year two felt more like a dark hallway I was walking through. I’d stumble in the dark, trying to feel my way out. It wasn’t all bad, but it also was definitely not all great.

I’ve learned a lot and a lot of those lessons were painful. But I also learned how to endure, how to rebuild, and how to heal. Mostly though, I’ve learned that grief is not only something I experience. It is something I live with everyday. Some days it’s in the background. Other days I’m drowning in it. But to describe grief as only a feeling, well, that does not do it justice.

Papa Lim and a very excited tiny me!

This is also the first year of this newsletter! So to honor that moment I want to share the three things I’ve learned in Grief Year Two.

1. Never underestimate the heaviness of secondary losses.

I talked about learning about secondary losses in one of my early newsletters. Think about it like this - the death of your person is the stone that drops into a pond. The ripples are your secondary losses - loss of identity, financial stability, sense of security, relationships with other people, etc.

Many things shifted for me after my dad died - friendships ended, I left DC after living there for 6 years, I lost my independence for a bit when I decided to move in with my mom. Each of those losses felt like pouring more salt on the wound. I didn’t anticipate my secondary losses, and that made them extremely difficult. And that meant I had to mourn those too.

2. There is no right way to grieve.

My grief is my own. If you have lost someone, your grief is also your own. Maybe, like me, you’re also an only child. Or maybe you also lost your dad. Maybe we’re the same age, with the same background, with the same love for cats and deadlifting.

All of that can be true yet our grief can look like night and day. We can process differently and we may need different types of support. Both of our griefs (grieves? Not sure what the plural is here!) are completely valid and are deserving of support. But there is no ‘right way’ to grieve. There is no correct timeline. There is no correct amount of tears you need to cry. There is no right way to feel. It is all valid and it is all unique.

3. You do not need to grieve alone.

Being in community with grievers is the best thing I have done for my grief. As many of you know, I host an in-person grief support group through The Dinner Party here in the Virginia Beach area. Each month we get together to be with each other and talk about our people and what our grief looks like at that moment in time. We also have a group text where we can come in and get ongoing support from each other inbetween our meetings. And we have a shared google calendar where we all put in our big grief days, so that folks can check in on each other when they know someone is going through a tough day.

I love our little group. I love every meeting we have. I love being connected in the group text. I love spending time with folks outside of the meetings too. I love that our people get to be remembered because we are still talking about them, still sharing stories, still saying their names. I love facilitating a space where it is safe to cry, it is safe to share, and it is ok to not be ok.

I hope to keep hosting our little group for many months to come. Because grievers speak the same language. We know what the hurt feels like, we know what the challenges are, we know why something completely mundane can make you break and ruin your day. That is the ultimate definition of being seen at your most vulnerable. And to me, that feels like the most healing experience.

Thank you for being with me this past year! I’m planning on chugging along, sharing my feels and resources as I move into Grief Year Three.

If you feel open, I’d love for you to share what you have learned about grief in the comments!

Big hugs!