It’s terrifying, isn’t it?

You wonder about how you will define it. You think to yourself that if you describe it JUST right, it will begin to lessen. The thing about grief that I have learnt is this: It never lessens; you adapt to live around the void it has created in you. You are shaped to its confines, which you simultaneously live within and outside of.

So when you begin to open up about your grief and write about it, you feel as though you are clawing to get it out of you, in the hopes that you’ll come to a better understanding of it. There are a variety of emotions and feelings to write about that could be adequately defined to more or less make sense to the reader, or at least to yourself. But to define grief, specifically, the grief that you have experienced due to a great loss—it feels impossible.

You find that doing simple, even mundane tasks, holds a deeper, larger meaning. Perhaps because they remind you of that person, that loss, and the empty spot in your life that they normally would have filled. Or perhaps because it makes you bear witness to life’s great fragility and your own mortality. To not take any of it for granted, and to seek a greater meaning in your own life. Grief and death force you to take everything into consideration.

Grief can make you buckle at the knees. Synchronicities become more apparent; you become more aware. Aware of your place in this realm, of how your existence impacts the existence of others. You are kinder, softer, more in tune with yourself. Unexpectedly, you find yourself having chiseled a new person from the shattered pieces, even when some have been missing.

Processing and writing about your grief can be one of the greatest ways to come to terms with it. It does not need to shrink to fit into your life, nor do you. You become fluid with it, like the waters that have permanently shaped you, forming this entirely new perspective on life and how important it is to live life truly, wholly, justly.