Your Road Map for Your Journey Ahead Through Grief and loss
Since the beginning of this new journey, in April 2017, I have been traveling. I’ve learned much more than any other time in my life. I have gained life lessons infused with immensely profound truth and wisdom. I’ve grown in ways I never have before and continue to do so as I keep traveling this journey. My life has changed much and continues to do so. I have found myself experiencing things I never thought would and in places and seasons in life I never thought I would ever be in. This new journey of loss and grief is a twisty, twiny, turning and ever changing fluid journey filled with so many things of and/both, struggle so many changes and emotions and much more.
What I have discovered over the last five plus years is that, even though this is absolutely without doubt the most challenging and hard season of my life that I’ve ever been through. But what has allowed me to make it and keep traveling this journey is what I learned earlier in my journey through life. In an earlier book entitled Now I See… A Lifetime of Learned Truths Along My Journey Through Life, I take people on what it has been to experience and travel my life’s journey of what I call my 38DDD. This is in no way my bra size. This is a journey of going from surviving to thriving no matter what life throws my way.
This involves life long Disability of Legal blindness since birth. The second ‘D’ relates to getting Divorce at age 26 in 2005. The third ‘D’ was the Death of my beloved husband in 2017 and solo parenting of our two babies. Much of what I will be taking you through in this chapter and the next five chapters is a system or methodology that I learned much earlier in my life than 2017 as a child having to navigate life with a disability. Then I would have to practice using the same muscles from life lessons when I got divorce in 2005.
In 2017 following the death of my beloved husband I would once again and continue to do so. On this new journey of grief and loss I have had and still put into practice and continue using the very same things I did previously in life to go from surviving to thriving in life with a Disability and getting through Divorce. These lessons and truths found in the steps of G.R.A.C.E. would prove and have been most essential, imperative, and fundamental to me going through, traveling and being able to continue on and through this journey of grief life. In no way am I saying it’s been easy, done with ease as if it has been a cake walk or walk in the park.
Quite the opposite in fact these last five plus years have been absolutely the hardest and worse years like no other in my life’s journey. Even that being true I’ve been able to find my way and how to travel this journey through loss and grief because of finding grace through grief. Learning to find grace and using the steps of G.R.A.C.E. Found in grief is what has allowed me to not be lost, not drown in this life storm but to keep traveling and striving to thrive on this most challenging journey.
This journey is definitely a process and it’s a slow and gradual one at best. The path through it is to keep traveling and going. Each of us must travel our own journey of our way. No one can or should tell you how to travel a journey that is yours and yours alone. I can’t tell you how to travel your own journey for you but I can give you things to guide you on your way such as to give you an instructional manual or road map to take with you as you are learning and discovering your own journey.
Each of these are essential steps and parts of how to navigate this journey. Each of these steps work together and can be flexible to your own journey that is what is best for you. While we travel the same journey of grief and loss it is yet different and unique to each of us for we are all unique and so we will experience it and travel our journey in our own unique way. Thus the essential steps needed to guide us can be taken and used in a way that is unique to each of us.
Over the next five chapters I want to share with you, lay out for you and take you through my approach I’ve learned over a lifetime of traveling my journey of 38DDD. This is what I call Finding G.R.A.C.E. through Grief and Life. This approach has most certainly served me well throughout my journey and absolutely the last five plus years since 2017 and entering my journey of loss, grief and life while and after grieving. I will briefly give you the five steps here so you will know where we are headed. In each of the following chapters we will do a deep dive on each of the steps of the road map for this journey.
In Finding Grace Through Grief the first step is the ‘G’ of Gaining your grounding in Grief and what will hold you steady or give you a firm foundation to hold on to for this journey. The ‘R’ in G.R.A.C.E. is daring to Redefine, Redesign and Redirect your course in life on your new journey. This is about what we will choose as we navigate this new journey in our lives. The third step is the ‘A’ which is about learning to live in Abundance this relates to our mindset we have for our journey as we travel it. Next we come ‘C’ which is choosing Clarity and Care over confusion and chaos. The final step is the ‘E’ which relates to being essentially Equipped for your journey.
Each of these steps work together to give you a guide and road map for your journey. It’s our choice in our grounding and foundation that allows us to know what choices we want and can make. Our Mindset helps us stay to those choices that are based in our foundation and grounding. In having clarity and be not distracted by and being lost in our confusion and chaos and getting care for ourselves allow us to maintain a balanced, clear focused, centered mindset that keeps true to our choices.Then we gather and gain all the tools and things we need to help be ready and equipped for this journey of grief and loss so that we get the care and clarity, to have the mindset and to keep true our choices that are based in our grounding foundation.
It is in and through these steps that we can have a path, a road map and instructions to travel this journey that allows to go from drowning, surviving to thriving in life as we continue to travel this journey of loss and grief because we have found G.R.A.C.E. in and through our Grief. Now that you know what is involved in Finding G.R.A.C.E. through Grief and what is needed to travel this journey are you ready to continue traveling with me as I give what can guide you for your own journey. Let’s get equipped with the power of knowledge so that we can be equipped for this journey with the essentials we need to learn how to not just survive but thrive as we continue to travel our journey through grief, loss and in life.