I am not new to blogging but I still have a lot to learn about it. Please allow me to give you an idea of who I am and why I blog. I have forty years of experience of supporting people in their grief. This includes professionally and volunteering as well as in my education.
As a boy people fascinated me. For the most part my fascination continues today. Through the years the ways people process their grief is of particular interest. I maintain every person I come alongside who is grieving is my teacher. The same applies to those I have sat with as they near the end of life. Each person is unique and so is how one grieves.
I call my blog, Scarred Joy. Here is an idea of what Scarred Joy means. Scarred Joy is deep grief leading to hope. It is pure raw pain seeing the light of healing. Scarred Joy is weeping and not knowing if we will smile again. We never lose the scars of our grief. In the scars grief and hope are together. We walk through life being familiar with our scars yet moving forward. We move forward in hope.
My hope for Scarred Joy is that it will inspire people to move forward in their lives. We can cling to hope, whatever hope may be. My tagline for my grief work is, Touched by Grief, Held by Hope.
I do not allow other people to tell me how to grieve. I grieve in a way suited to me. I also never tell other people how to grieve. I do, however, encourage people to not be afraid of their grief. Rather, we can honour our grief. Through grieving we can teach ourselves lessons of who we are. If we listen to ourselves even in grief we may gift ourselves with compassion for other people.
Through compassion we learn to empathize with the pain of others. In the grief and death-denying context of North America compassion is vital. Compassion allows one to hug not only a loved one but also a stranger who is grieving. Compassion is recognizing our grief and that of other people can teach us we are not alone. We are in this grief together. This fact may elude some people but it is still real. I hope you will follow my Scarred Joy blog. Please comment about what your read. Even in this way we may learn from each other.
ScarredJoy 