Navigating Grief
We don’t move on from grief we move forward with it.
A TEDTalk by Nora McInerny
Death and navigating grief are topics we all shy away from but one which will touch us all eventually.
For my family this came last year on the 18th of May when my children lost their father and I lost my ex-husband to COVID complications related to renal disease. Take it from me, there is nothing as devastating and heart-wrenching as having to tell your children they have lost a parent. And nothing, not even long illness, prepares you for the finality of that moment. I remember their seeming numbness and the quiet silent tears that fell as they tried to comprehend what was happening.
Their dad had been sick their whole lives, something we lived with and somehow was all they knew, their normal. People live with renal disease and on dialysis for decades but when COVID came knocking that all changed. The irony of it is that Garth was the most diligent person when it came to protecting himself from the virus. All of a sudden our children were navigating grief.
Writer and podcaster Nora McInerny in her TEDTalk speaks to those of us who have suffered loss. A series of heartbreaking tragedies in her own life inspired her to give this talk which has been seen more than 50 million times. As her website explains so beautifully:
Nora’s affinity for getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is born of experience”
Terrible, Thanks for Asking (Nora McINERnY)
This talk is a riveting, hard-hitting yet funny and witty speech is a very personal account of how grief and loss impacted her life and what she learnt from it. She begins:
So, 2014 was a big year for me. Do you ever have that, just like a big year, like a banner year? For me, it went like this: October 3, I lost my second pregnancy. And then October 8, my dad died of cancer. And then on November 25, my husband Aaron died after three years with stage-four glioblastoma, which is just a fancy word for brain cancer.
NORA MCINERNY
Navigating Loss by Moving on…
And as Nora explains it, it is not necessary to have to say you have “move on”. She hates the phrase and I agree completely with her. I also understand that “moving on” is for the people around us not for those who have lost a loved one. We’re not in denial or forgetful because the people we have lost are still present for us. She says about moving on:
Because what it says is that Aaron’s life and death and love are just moments that I can leave behind me — and that I probably should. And when I talk about Aaron, I slip so easily into the present tense, and I’ve always thought that made me weird. And then I noticed that everybody does it. And it’s not because we are in denial or because we’re forgetful, it’s because the people we love, who we’ve lost, are still so present for us.
Navigating Loss by Moving Forward…
Most powerfully Nora encourages us to shift how we look at grief. “A grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again,” she says. “They’re going to move forward. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve moved on.”
If this post touched you read my post by Sarah Kay If I Should Have a Daughter. You can also download her poem as a free printable in the follow up post If I Should Have a Daughter Free Printable.
