Grief
Grief and Love
If you’ve lost a loved one you might feel as though you’ve lost love. Before you had love, but now it’s gone. It’s suddenly vanished, right along with your beloved.
But what you’ve got to realize is that love is not a noun, it’s not an object to have. Love is a verb, it’s an action which changes the receiver of that love in important ways. The change in you is proof the love is still inside of you, proof it hasn’t disappeared. Your loved one might be gone but the loving actions remain.
You see, when someone loves us it means they see the best in us, the best of what we are right now and also the best of what we can become. This is most obviously seen in the parent-child relationship where all those loving actions support the developmental process and ultimately help the child grow into productive adulthood. Where neglect and abuse warp the child into something he or she is not, loving actions give the child the chance to become who he or she really is.
And we humans have the opportunity to keep growing long after the developmental process from childhood to adulthood has come to an end. We might stop growing on the physical plane but we can still grow on the emotional, psychological, and spiritual planes.
If your loved one helped you grow, supported you in your times of need, gave you the courage to become yourself, made you feel like a worthy and lovable person, then it means you haven’t lost that love at all. It has simply transformed, transformed into the current version of you.
So don’t despair, don’t hang your head in sorrow at the apparent loss of love in your life and rather realize that as long as you choose to let the best of who and what you are shine out into the world the love you received from your beloved will be shining out too.