This Old Man's Response To A Woman Dealing With Grief Left The Internet In Tears

Jul 30, 2018 by apost team

Grief is often hard to deal with for any person. However, a young woman received some amazing advice about it from a man with wisdom.

Grief is something that every person has to deal with at some point or another, but it isn't an easy thing. Loss often occurs at inopportune times, and the grief-stricken person will just have to deal with it. Fortunately, some people in the world that have the gift of saying just what we need to hear at the right time.

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Such was the case when a young person took to Reddit to try to find some source of comfort over the loss of her friend. Her friend had just passed away, and she felt a void and a large wound that she felt would never heal. That's when one of the wise people in the community, a much older man, spoke to her about grief and healing.

He did not condemn or shun grief. He did not complain about the losses that he'd experienced in his lifetime. To the contrary, he celebrated his grief and he honored the time that he got to spend with the people that he lost in his life.

The older man described the grieving process as being similar to a shipwreck. He said that it initially hits a person so hard that they are just overwhelmed, caught up in gigantic waves, getting hit by all the wreckage that surrounds them, and having difficulty breathing because of the shock of it all. He described the waves of grief as 100-foot waves that appear every 10 seconds of one's life in the beginning. This is the most difficult part, when a person struggles the most to get their footing back.

He then described how the healing process flows. He said that the person would start to experience breathing in between the waves of grief, and these breathing sessions would allow the individual to function. The waves of grief eventually would spread apart in frequency, calmness, and consistency over time. Eventually, the waves won't come unless a trigger makes them come.

The grieving person never knows when the trigger is going to come. It can be anything that triggers the response. It can be something like the scent that someone smells in a room, or something that somebody else says, or the lyrics of a song. When those triggers hit, the person will experience grieving, but will never be like the original experience was. It will always be less intense.

The man said that the pain that one feels during grieving is not something to be ashamed of. The scars on one's heart are not something to be ashamed of.

They are a testimony of the gigantic amount of love that they had for other people. The more of a shipwreck of grief that one experiences, the more love that the individual likely had for that person.

These shipwrecks happen to everybody and some point or another in their life. Society is often not kind when people grieve as they see it as a sign of weakness.

It's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of love, compassion, empathy, and humanity.

You can read the full response here. It's worth it.

Have you ever dealt with grief? What has your experience been? Show this to someone who's suffered loss to see if it resonates with them. Spread the word so that your loved ones can learn to deal with grief, as well.