There are times my grief has made me feel unhealthy.

In many ways I resent what grief has created in me: lack of initiative, an inability to reach out, extreme neediness, decreased social ability, diminished capacity to endure more emotional pain, mental lapses, and so on.  I have particularly feared that it has made me more selfish and self-indulgent. 

Yet, what scares me even more is that I don’t know how long my grief will last.  I could be sitting in these challenges and reduced capacities for quite some time.  It feels detrimental, as if stifling my ability to move toward wholeness.

But my dear friend Sarah, who is also deeply grieving the loss of Jud (she helped me care for him almost every day for over three months), reminded me that these things are part of grief, and to not grieve is what would be unhealthy.  To usurp the process, however long it takes, because it feels ugly, would cause the most harm.

Tears pooled in my eyes as I felt the freedom in her words.