Danielle Patton, our Widowed Young Support Coordinator, highlights the struggle of entering the season of spring while experiencing winter grief.
Time is a strange thing for those of us who are bereaved, and the ever-changing seasons can heighten our awareness of it.
Spring is often understood as a time of new beginnings. The winter season has gone, and we begin to see signs of spring. The snow is melting, and flowers begin to bloom. There is new life everywhere, and the joy of a new season emerges.
However, for those of us who have experienced the intense pain and sorrow of losing our partner, we often feel as though we are stuck in a perpetual winter. Everything seems so cold, dark and bleak, while the world around us is full of new life and new beginnings. We wonder if it will always be this way, and it is often hard to imagine that it could be beautiful again. It is as if we are out of sync with the world. Winter is thawing, yet we remain frozen.
There will be a day, however, when our winter will begin to thaw, and our spring will come. We begin to see glimpses of hope and new beginnings. Sometimes, it is like being in a very dense forest, and suddenly small patches of light break through the foliage of the trees, revealing what we could not see due to the darkness. We see what was hidden, and that beautiful things can grow in places of darkness. We gain a new perspective and grasp onto these signs of hope, which help us find our footing and keep moving forward.
Our seasons of winter are different for every one of us, as our grief experiences are unique. Some will see the spring quicker than others, while some of us take longer to move forward, and that is OK. We grieve at different paces and in different ways, and what is important is that we keep moving forward. With hope, it is possible to feel the ice melt away and begin to experience new possibilities.
Although our lives will never be the same, the resilience developed helps to move us toward a life that can be both good and beautiful. It will be different from what we thought it would be, but as we grieve the hopes and dreams that we have lost, we also have the ability to create new dreams and beginnings. The season of winter has been bitter, but hope lies before us. When we are ready, spring emerges.
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