Bryan, what does growing through grief look like for you?

I appreciate this question because it gives me an opportunity to share that my life looks very different each day. Overtime, my weeks and months have expanded in many directions.

I posted on social media earlier this week holding a flower and sharing that I have to plant positivity in the grief soaked ground around me. I had a comment suggesting that I was pouring toxic positivity on my widowhood. I realized that he was doing something we have been conditioned to accept immediately. He judged what I posted without hesitation or looking into my overall journey. He, unknowingly, used toxic perception.

Gone are the days that people give each other grace and the benefit of the doubt. Too often I have heard someone demand benefit of the doubt for them selves yet turn and burn their neighbor because:

“Their perception is your reality.”

I hate that statement and I don’t use the “h” word lightly. I have had past employers use that term to manipulate people and I refuse to honor it. The intent is to make others bend to “your rules and viewpoints”.

I could have easily lashed out and responded aggressively but I gave the commenter the benefit of the doubt. They were reacting in a place of dark grief. Don’t get me wrong, I am mad at the comment but I’m not mad at that person. I’m mad they are in so much hurt and sorrow. I just wish I could take it away but that’s not within my power. It’s us and us alone that can choose to plant positivity in our own grief gravel. All I can do is be an example, a full example that there are many shadowed moments where the widowed veil blocks my view. So I commented back that I have a widowed blog and I share the happy and the hard. I reiterated that my post said “grow through grief” but just in case it helps others to know my journey isn’t simple…

I can’t take Clayton’s last name off the label in our mailbox because it’s the only place in the whole world that our names are together on paper…