Seasons of Resilience

Let’s talk about grief.

The more I think about grief, talk about it, and share my grief with others, the more it is normalized in my own life. Grief is this big, ugly, scary, unrecognizable, invisible, and heavy thing we all walk around with. If we look back on the Latin root of the word, “gravis,” it actually means heavy or weighted. And yes, if you’re wondering, I did take Latin in high school. This dead language is still serving me today.

Grief can come in all shapes and forms and sneak up on us when we’re least expecting it. We often expect grief when someone dies, especially someone we were very close with. But sources of grief can be as expansive as the unique ways we experience it. I’ve noticed that when I remind myself that I am grieving, my symptoms, if you will, make a lot more sense.

Reminder: we are all grieving in one way or another.

This pandemic has spun us all in a frenzy of making sense of life while trying to survive and unknowingly carrying loads of emotions with every trip to the grocery store. We are experiencing a global trauma and walking through grief. Yes, you are walking through grief because you’re life has changed, right? Things aren’t the way they were “pre-COVID.” You’ve had to make adjustments, get used to a new rhythm, find joy in small ways.

Are you missing your family? That’s grief. Sad that you can’t hang out with friends? Grief. Frustrated that work is either more stressful or less readily available? That’s grief too. All the things we have collectively gone through in the last however many months contributes to the weight we carry each day. Grief is not something that we can see, but often it’s something we feel.

After moving to a new city, switching jobs, walking away from the church I called home, getting married and creating a new home, and experiencing devastating loss of loved ones, I have felt things that are not common for me to feel. There were days I couldn’t get out of bed. Sometimes I felt myself tearing up, wanting to cry for no apparent reason. I was irritable, frustrated, sad, angry, and wishing things were different. I was flowing through the stages of grief and not realizing that’s what was going on. My tiredness was a lethargy I couldn’t explain, and pulling away from relationships was a way to manage the stressors that continued without regard for my grief.

It can be so helpful to recognize grief. Naming it, noticing it, can do wonders for your spirit and guide you along a path of caring for yourself through the difficulty of it all. And beyond what we can do for ourselves, talking about grief with friends and family can be healing. Normalizing this thing we’re all experiencing, in the various ways we experience it, can be what helps us get out of bed in the morning and find a new rhythm in life.

So why don’t we talk about it?

My friend, Mabel, and I noticed that people weren’t talking about the thing smacking us all in the face. People were trying to make sense of grief without naming it and claiming it. Mabel is a hospice music therapist who is gaining a master’s in clinical social work, and she has been working with people around this topic of grief for years. We started to notice how grief is the gray cloud in the air and no one around us was looking up at the sky like we were.

And so we decided to have the conversations and invite guests to share their stories of grief. What we acknowledge is that grief is closely followed by resilience. You know, the strength of the human spirit to keep on going through hard times. That resilience! We have seen in our own lives and others how grief can be managed, supported, and integrated into the very fabric of our lives. It takes courage to walk through grief, and time with a trained therapist is always recommended. And grief is the human experience that makes us resilient. We wanted to honor that strength, have the conversations, and talk about grief.

This podcast, Seasons of Resilience, is for anyone who goes through challenges, difficulties, and loss but recognizes that life is lived in seasons. We’ll engage in comfortable and uncomfortable conversations, we’ll share about the good and bad, the ups and downs, just how life is. To everything, there is a season and a time for every emotion that is experienced.

We hope you enjoy these stories of resilience. We want to invite you into the conversations and carry the grief along with us. We want to highlight the seasonal aspect of life and take note of the ever-evolving seasons in our own lives.

Join us for Seasons of Resilience, and find it wherever you listen to podcasts. (or click here to listen!)

Feel free to get in touch with us and follow along on Instagram @limitlessharmonies and @kimbestcreative. We are here with and for you. We hope you are grieving well and honoring the resilience within yourself.