My Grief Is Like the Ocean: A Story for Children Who Lost a Parent to Suicide

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When you don’t allow yourself to talk about your loss experience, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity for healing. Holding on to your pain and sorrow is detrimental to your recovery and overall wellbeing. Sharing your story with others is therapeutic and a necessary part of the healing process.

Like the ocean, waves of grief come and go. At first it feels like the waves are crashing over your head, but then, eventually, the grief begins to recede. The grief will most likely rise again in some form or fashion, but enjoying the calm and being thankful for the times when grief isn’t too bad is an important part of the healing process. It’s easy to feel guilty for “being ok,” but it’s a positive thing when you make progress after a devastating loss or difficult experience. And everyone will experience the waves of grief in a different way. The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to. Grief is painful. There's no other way to get past the sometimes excruciating pain other than by allowing yourself to feel it. Once you go through the most painful part of your grief, you'll emerge a different person with a renewed sense of resiliency and a different outlook. Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you’ve lived.” ~ Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

What is anger?

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope. The reality of loss doesn’t immediately sink in. The consequences of loss can take years to manifest, sending a new wave of emotion when least expected. Waves of grief usually happen around the time of significant events that you missed out on, like your loved one’s graduation from college, wedding day, or retirement. Your emotions are unpredictable Learn to accept and get through your grief. Don’t ignore or downplay its power to make you a better, more well-rounded person. How we come out of our grief enables us to begin again with a renewed mind-body and spirit, feeling the purpose and the wonder of life itself.

Hey all, I recently joined this sub and try to comment on as many of the posts as I can that I feel I can help out a bit. I am dealing with my own grief as well, but I wanted to share some information I found some years ago, posted on reddit before I even knew what reddit was. It is really great advice, and I hope everyone gets a chance to read it. Often I considered letting myself sink. I grew tired of living, and I felt scared and resentful of living without the man I love. Giving up seemed like a relief. But I have two daughters. The most precious gift from the love I shared with Jason. They also were trying their best to learn to swim in their own ocean of grief. So giving up would mean adding to their sorrow and I wasn’t prepared to cause them even more pain. There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life. Even the loss of a job can bring with it waves of grief. We need to know even that feeling of loss and grief is OK. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents... The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.” This loss does not have to be the loss of a loved one. That feeling of loss can be from rejection or even losing a fantastic job we’ve loved.