Other Titles by Ashley Davis Bush, LICSW
Transcending Loss
Understanding the Lifelong Impact of Grief and How to Make It Meaningful
Claim Your Inner Grown-Up
4 Essential Steps to Authentic Adulthood
Shortcuts to Inner Peace
70 Simple Paths to Everyday Serenity
75 Habits for a Happy Marriage
Marriage Advice to Recharge and Reconnect Every Day
Simple Self-Care for Therapists
Restorative Practices to Weave Through Your Workday
This edition first published in 2016 by Conari Press, an imprint of
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
With offices at:
65 Parker Street, Suite 7
Newburyport, MA 01950
Copyright © 2016 by Ashley Davis Bush
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
ISBN: 978-1-57324-667-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
Cover photograph © Slivsarenko Luliia/Shutterstock
Interior by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Typeset in Bernhard Modern with Museo Sans and PTIL Liberty Foundry
Printed in Canada
MAR
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www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter
To all those in emotional pain, may this book be a light in the darkness
Death doesn't end the relationship; it simply forges a new type of relationship—one based not on physical presence but on memory, spirit, and love . . .
—ASHLEY DAVIS BUSH, Transcending Loss
Contents
Meditations: January 1–December 31
Light in the Darkness
I was twenty-five when I sat in my first session—my first session, that is, in which I was the therapist. With only a month of social work schooling under my belt, I was assigned to my first client, Joan.
It might have been a bewildering encounter given my inexperience, but instead it was transformative. Joan was a middle-aged woman assigned to me for grief counseling. Her beloved sister had been murdered by a handyman in their own home.
I sat with Joan through her tears and I listened. I asked questions. I listened some more. I allowed myself to be touched by her sorrow, and I provided a container for her pain. When I presented this case to my fledgling colleagues, they said, “Oh, how can you work with her? Her story is so depressing.”
And yet, curiously, I felt at ease with Joan and her deep sorrow. During our first session together, there was a ‘click’ of recognition that I was being called to work with the bereaved. And so, for the last twenty-five years, I have done just that.
I have sat with countless widows and widowers, from young to old. I have offered tissues to bereaved parents in their inconsolable grief. I have normalized, educated, listened to, and championed grievers who felt tremendous pain and still chose life.
In fact, I became so immersed in this calling that I studied the grieving process and wrote a book about it—Transcending Loss. In the decades since its publication, the grieving process has not changed: Grief is painful and needs to be felt just as love is eternal and needs to be celebrated.
However, with the rise of the Internet, a new dawn has arrived in which grievers have many more options for sharing their grief and connecting to others. This has been an exciting development, because grievers can now bond with other grievers around the world in therapeutic ways.
In 2009, I began the Facebook forum “Transcending Loss” as a way to reach out to those who grieve. The forum featured short, daily reflections as a starting point for grievers from around the world to share their stories and comfort each other. In just a few years, the forum grew from several hundred participants to over twenty-five thousand. This book rose out of that experience. I became keenly aware that short, daily words of hope and comfort make a real difference to people on the grief journey.
As I continue to interact with grievers from around the world, I am again reminded of the universality of grief. And although each journey is unique, there are many common experiences.
As you read through the year, you will encounter recurring themes that reflect the seven essential lessons of loss:
1 Grief is a normal reaction. Grief is the natural emotional and physical response to the death of a loved one. Although our society desperately wants to avoid the messiness of deep sorrow, there is no way out except through the pain. Typical numbing techniques such as medications, alcohol, and food are only temporary distractions to dull the pain.Letting ourselves grieve by going directly into the pain—in manageable doses over a long period of time—is healing. Avoiding the pain simply forces it to go deep into the heart, where it subtly affects emotional and physical health.
2 Grief is hard work. Grief isn't easy and it isn't pretty. It involves tears, sleepless nights, pain, sorrow, and a heartache that knocks you to your knees. It can be hard to concentrate, hard to think clearly, hard to read, and easy to forget all the details of life