From Loss of Loved Ones to Hope and Freedom
The challenge that brought me to Seasonal Groups, specifically Grief Care, was losing our third son, miles during a miscarriage. I had a lot of difficulties processing it, and so I ended up discovering in therapy that one of the big reasons why I was having such a hard time, was because I hadn’t properly grieved the loss of my mother 30 years prior to her passing to cancer. The passing of my son had a huge impact on my life. I’m usually a pretty upbeat, friendly person, but behind the scenes, I was going through a deep depression. Something that I had never really experienced before. I didn’t quite know what was happening. You know, I couldn’t really recognize myself, so I knew for sure that something was happening. But at the same time, you know, my husband and my kids, they, they knew something was up as well.
So it really affected our family life. It really changed, the way things were happening in my mental health. And, it was really difficult because I wanted to sort of hide it from everybody around me just because I didn’t want anybody to see that side of me. But at the same time I knew that not only that, that, that this wasn’t who I was, but, that in losing someone that you love, just by knowing how my life has changed from losing my mom at a young age, I’ve seen how God has used something as painful as the loss of somebody that you love and turns it into a seed that, bears fruit and bears as a harvest.
That in the moment when it happens, you don’t really think about how your life can change and how God can make something good out of it. I got connected through a seasonal group, shortly after we had lost our son. We were in service, and it was around the time when Seasonal Groups are about to start up. And I noticed that there was a group called Grief Care that was going to be starting up. And so I thought it would be a good idea to, find out more about it and to see how it could, start up with the group and see what it was about and how it could help.
Joining a Seasonal Group, impacted me in a lot of ways. Initially, I went into the group thinking that I was going to completely healed, that I was going to go back to my old self. But just after the first session, I realized that one of the big things about grief is that it’s something that you experience and it’s so painful because of how deeply you love the person that you lost. And so, after that very first session, I realized that I didn’t want to go back to the person who I was, I didn’t want to be, in denial of what happened. And I wanted to be able to process it and to heal properly and to have a better understanding of how I could be part of God’s plan to make something good out of my pain. Being in a group setting really helped me to understand how it is that we’re not supposed to be alone.
Learning about how other people were processing their losses through their different relationships, and, their different lives helped me to understand that in all of our pain, even though we each have a different experience, we are beside each other on our own paths of grief. And it helped me to see that in the little things that I could share about my own grief journey, I was helping other people. And at the same time hearing about the little things that they were going through, whether they were, similarities or differences really helped me to, fill in the gaps and to have a better understanding of what my grief journey was like.
For people who are thinking about attending a Seasonal Group. I would completely recommend going, for a long time I was a little bit worried or scared of what it would mean but as I was able to work it out. I was able to understand that even though it meant that I would have to possibly open up old wounds, be vulnerable, go through some of the pain again, I knew that that was something that was necessary in order to heal properly.
Being in the group was, more than I thought it was going to be. I learned so much about what are good signs of how your grieving, and I learned about how different people grieved different ways. And so I also had a better understanding of why my husband was grieving in a different way. I learned about the things that, I didn’t quite understand at first, especially around my mother’s death. And you know, how I wasn’t able to process that properly simply because I was too young or there were things that I just didn’t know that I was supposed to or deal with. And so there are so many things that you can take away, but also contributes to being in a Seasonal Group.
Being around people and developing your friendships, having that common ground where you know that in your pain and in their pain, there is, love and a relationship that can grow from there. And it’s just one of the ways that God, is creating something new out of something old or some piece of creating something good out of something that’s painful and difficult.
And at the same time, the leaders that I had were amazing. They also had suffered significant losses in their family, but to see how they have healed and how they continued to go through the process of grief, was something too, witness. To see that, in sharing, our experiences and sharing theirs over with so many other groups, you reach a point where you know that you’re going to be okay, that, things are not always going to be difficult. And you know, when they are difficult, you have the tools and the resources to help you through those moments.
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