What Death Has Taught Me
How grief became my greatest teacher and transformed my life into a mission of healing.
Death is painful. As a therapist working with people who are grieving, I have often said that they must feel to heal. We all grieve differently, and through my certifications in grief therapy, I have been taught different techniques to prepare for just about every scenario. I was also trained to be a chaplain, going through a year-long program that partly taught me how to compartmentalize my own grief, especially when I was triggered, so I could be more effective when families lost a loved one.
Degrees, certifications, and workshops are part of our training in grief. There are also our life experiences—something that, as professional therapists, we will face sooner or later. My mom died young and suddenly. She was in a tragic car accident. It has been over 32 years since she died. I am still on a healing journey because grief remains with us for as long as the person who died is gone from our lives.
Death taught me to survive. I was in survival mode for a long time. As I pushed through my pain and sorrow, I was able to help others through their pain and sorrow. We cannot experience joy until we feel pain. We cannot experience happiness until we feel sadness. When we feel fear, we learn how to experience courage. Anger allows us to get in touch with all of our feelings.
If we intentionally feel to heal, if we allow ourselves to survive, this journey will eventually lead us to truly live life.
Death taught me to feel pain, sadness, and fear. Death taught me to live life. It opened the door to a career that my mom never knew I would have. She used to tell me to leave people better than I found them. As a therapist, I have done that. She also taught me to take the bad in my life and make it good. Her death helped me demonstrate how to do this.
It takes a lifetime to build a relationship with ourselves and with others. I am still building a relationship with my mom, who, even though she is gone, is still with me—in the sweet words she placed in my mind and in the love she graciously gave me in my heart.
