Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey
While going to Grief Share meetings, the discussions we had and the things people shared helped me a lot, especially when it came to certain thoughts that are extremely common that need to be altered.
1. My mom wasn't taken from me.
It can often feel like our loved ones are taken from us. We'll even pray "Please, don't take [fill in with your loved one's name or title]."
I know when my mom was first diagnosed that I had prayed, "Don't take her away from me."
But I did not own my mom.
None of us own our loved ones. Everything that we say is ours (our significant other, children, parents, pets) don't belong to us. They are on loan to us while we are here. If you're religious, then they're on loan to us from God.
If we don't own them, then they can't be taken from us. My mom was my mom here, for which I'll always be grateful that I was blessed to have her as my mom, but she's more than that beyond my life and beyond her life.