How does grief feel they asked?
Imagine holding my whole body right now in your arms. Then suddenly, every part of me shatters into a million tiny pieces. Some parts crumble to the ground, some parts are lost to the wind, and some parts still float around you, waiting to be saved. Tiny fragile parts of me pulled apart within a single moment. That’s how grief feels….
-Phoebe Young-
It’s rare to meet someone who hasn’t been a victim to the effects of the last 19 months. The level of grief is like no time before. The immense pain so many people feel right now, the heartache, the loneliness. The goodbyes that were never possible, the suffering people have had to feel in all corners of our world, it’s a time of heavy grief, heavy shift, and complete life-altering reality. A time that none of us could have prepared for, a time where all that’s left are the broken pieces to pick back up after the chaos of this pandemic has torn through so many of our lives.
We have been forced to notice how much we truly did take for granted, our freedom, the embrace of our loved ones, the smiles on our elderly grandparent’s faces when we’d visit. So many normalities unable to be reached, so much we long to have again, to hold again. Our lives have moved into a completely different space, a new story, a new journey, the path is hard. To know how much of the world battles in the brutality of grief right now leaves my heart heavy. To know how the waves of this forceful pain have ripped through so many lives leaves me with nothing but a deep pride for how strong our human race truly is.
I too, know grief well, after losing my Dad to cancer in 2019. I know how it storms into your world leaving destruction and agony. I know how it leaves you in a midst of helplessness, feeling like you could never possibly feel whole again. I know how you battle in your mind each and every day to simply breathe through such crushing pain. I know how hard this path is that you didn’t choose to walk. I know this new part of your life is incredibly hard.
I feel that agony in the memories that will now haunt you, those missed moments, those stolen futures. The pandemic has taken so much from so many. So many left feeling cheated by life, so many left to navigate a world that they never saw coming. The grief that has spread throughout our world has clouded us with so much deep pain and sadness that it’s hard to see the light at times.
I have been in those spaces of grief that are dark and suffocating and I can still find myself in them now. But what I am learning as my journey continues without those I’ve lost is how immensely strong we really are. I feel my grief in all its forms and I do it wholeheartedly. I don’t hold back in expression, I scream and cry on the days that I am called to do so, I don’t resit, I don’t fight, I simply feel. Our grief demands to be seen, it demands to be felt, it will not sit on the side-lines, it demands its stage to dance on, and it will.
I know that this path is not an easy one, but I also know your ability to walk it in all its painful beauty. There are no answers in grief, there is no fix. Grief is equal to love; we loved them in life and so will we in death. Grief is a journey that whilst I find it indescribably hard, I feel it a gift in the strangest of ways. I would choose this pain day after day as it is proof of my love for those I’ve lost. It’s a reminder to me over and over that love wins, love is what makes us feel, love, connects us for eternity. Life is fragile but so incredibly beautiful. To know love, to of loved my Dad feels to me, the greatest gift of all.
I’ve learned so many things from my Dad and my grief. I can now see so many gifts that I’ve been left with even now he is not here. That’s something I never thought would come, but it has. I know now how important it is to be connected to one another, to love one another. To notice the simple things, those moments of laughter, those hugs. You realise how valuable these simple things are when someone with who you shared those moments so often is no longer here.
To all those, we have lost during such a life-altering time, and to those left behind to move through this next chapter of your life, I see you fully. In all the pain, through all the tears, in all the joy, and in all the love, I see you – Phoebe x
A section from the book “The Gift”
The gift of the story you never got to write.
Nothing you love will ever truly leave you. Yes, it will physically at some point, sadly death is inevitable. But there is nothing in this universe that can ever remove that bond, that connection, that deep-set feeling within your soul. You and the person that has left are intertwined in an endless weave of blissful light. The light you have within you reaches them, it keeps them with you. Nothing with that much power, that much strength, that much love, can ever truly leave you.
The Gift: Amazon.co.uk: Young, Phoebe: 9798561270727: Books
As my blog name says- there is no textbook!“
- Dear Dad… It’s been four years without you - March 18, 2023
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- A Pandemic of Grief - September 26, 2021
