Grief Awareness Day: Guest Post by Amanda Held Opelt

Today is National Grief Awareness Day.  It’s a strange thing to me, to consolidate our collective empathy and consciousness towards something that is such a universal human experience to one day.  But then again, maybe a day like today is needed because even though most of us have dealt with grief at one point in our lives, we like to compartmentalize it.  We like to pretend we can continue through life unaffected and unhindered by the losses we’ve suffered.  

But we can’t.  Grief makes us new.  It changes us.  So we need to be reminded of the toll grief takes…on us and on those around us.

The thing that has surprised me most about grief is its duration, how even though the acuteness of the loss diminishes over time, grief has a way of rearing its ugly head in ways and at times when you least expect.  Yes, you acclimate to the new normal, yes you learn how to live without the one you loved.  But you never truly recover.  You never have full closure.  

Unlike times in the past, when people use to mark a long period of mourning by wearing black (widows used to wear black for 2 and a half years after the loss of their husbands), on the outside, it probably seems like I am fine.  There’s nothing physical to mark the emotional overhaul I’ve experienced.  I’m not wearing a t-shirt that says, “my sister died two years ago and I’m still not fully functional.”  Folks at the grocery store don’t know that on her birthday, I’m barely crawling and it might be nice to let me move to the front of the line.  Friends don’t know why sometimes I just need to cancel plans because something seemingly random or innocuous happened that sent me spiraling back into the black hole of grief.

The reality is that there are many people living under the silent tyranny of grief.  We are doing our best to show up, to work to church to family gatherings to social events.  We might not always say it, but we are struggling.

With that in mind, I’m reminded that most people we interact with could probably use a little bit of grace.  Grief awareness is a call to generosity of spirit towards everyone we encounter, especially these days, when there is so much loss all around us.

Grief awareness also means I need to be gracious to myself, to understand that this is a marathon, not a sprint.  I need accept that I’ve been changed by grief, and that’s ok.