From Grief to Praise

As an only child and deeply connected to my mom, it was the hardest thing in my life so far to say good bye to her. I was by her side since she began her cancer treatment until ten months later when she passed on. I was eighteen and distraught. I remember thinking, “how can I be experiencing so much pain and still be alive?”

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I consider that to be the time when my life and my idea of life drastically changed. 

After a year of deep sorrow and not finding much support at home nor knowing where to look for it, I went out to the world.

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For the past twenty years I lived in four different countries and visited numerous others.

I began to explore nature in all its grandiosity, feeling a familiar sense of awe in the presence of the ocean and the sensation of rain on my skin. I opened up to find a shared humanity through my encounters, despite sometimes not even having a common verbal language. I also began to experience the magic that comes with life sometimes when a moment is made up of pure joy and connectedness.

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I slowly began transforming grief to praise. Martin Pretchel says:

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“Grief is praise of those we have lost”            

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Grief is the honor of having experienced that depth of love. And my grief was the clearing that invited me to look inward and be in the continual pursuit for meaning and Truth.

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Praising life and love is the way I chose to feel reconnected to my loved ones who had passed on, to myself, and to some Divine Greater Spirit that I cannot comprehend but that manifests in my life at its own will.