Blessings
As we learn to live life with intense grief and without Miles one of the strongest tools which has helped us is to name our blessings. Literally - same them out loud. Every day.
One of our biggest blessings is the access to specialized grief counselors via tele-health. If COVID did anything positive it created a way for people to access world class care that circumvented location. Bradley and I are able to work with someone who specializes in losing a child to cancer and Carter is able to work with someone who works with kids around the world who have lost a sibling.
We are early in our walk with grief and in our work but have already learned so much. One of the biggest things we have learned this last week is that when human beings experience a traumatic loss - we actually experience a form of brain trauma. This article HERE can provide much more information in a more articulate matter - but essentially our pre-frontal cortex shuts down. My inability to remember simple tasks or conversations was completely validated.
Secondly, we have learned that grief is love and that if we stopped grieving we would stop loving. That’s a pretty strong sentence to stomach - but we will learn ways to live with our grief because we will never stop loving.
On top of the brain trauma and the life-long grief - we also have learned that we need to heal from the traumas we have endured over the last two years we have fought. Fighting Cancer is filled with trauma. Throw all of that on top of living our daily life and the developing brain of a 13 year old - we are soooo blessed to have access to world class therapists.
So we count our blessings. I am so blessed that I don’t have to work right now so I can work through grief. (Even though I miss my job so much). We are blessed that Carter has an amazing school to go back to with educators who genuinely love him. We are blessed with our #scottvalleystrong community and the messages we receive from around the world. We are blessed to know that because of our faith in Jesus Christ we will all be in heaven together one day to count our blessings - together.
Go count your blessings.
