Elephants and Tea - December 2021 - 8

Finding Meaning HOPE
Let Your Grief Help
You Find the Light
BY LISA ORR
" People talk about grief as
emptiness, but it's not empty. It's
full. Heavy. Not an absence to
fill. A weight to pull. Your skin
caught on hooks chained to rough
boulders made of all the futures
you thought you'd have. "
-Elan Mastai
Grief is heavy. It is a test of faith. It is an
emotion that makes you question your purpose.
It begs you to ask, " Why me? " Grief is a
lot of time spent thinking about what could
have been. It is a lot of wondering, " What
if? " It is a feeling of weakness. It is loneliness
personified. It is a loss of innocence. It can
be not only an actual death, but a figurative
one as well... the death of your old self. Grief
can haunt you to your core if you let it. It can
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DECEMBER 2021
break you down if you allow it to. Grief changes
people... and as hard as it is to navigate, when
you look closely, you can say with conviction
that grief exists because of love. You grieve
the loss of something beautiful or someone
special that once was. You grieve the reminder
of a past life, a life before cancer... a much
simpler time. But grief wouldn't exist without
love, without happiness. You must have one to
have the other.
" Grief is like the ocean; it comes
in waves, ebbing and flowing.
Sometimes the water is calm, and
sometimes it is overwhelming. All
we can do is learn to swim. "
-Vicki Harrison
Almost three years out from my diagnosis
of triple negative breast cancer, I find that my
grief varies from day to day. I am sure you can
agree that certain thoughts, images, and conversations
trigger the blanket of grief to allow
its weight to fall heavy on you. Hearing the
news about cancer touching someone's life or
hearing about a new diagnosis brings me right
back to the moment that changed my world
forever. Does that happen to you? I am brought
immediately back to my kitchen floor - the
location where I sat for hours feeling helpless
and numb after my own diagnosis. As selfish
as it may sound, hearing about a loss in the
cancer community almost immediately makes
me think of my own personal worst-case scenario.
Even if I was in a great mental headspace
on that particular day, hearing news about a
major loss sends me in a downward spiral, a
nosedive deep into the darkest spaces of my
mind - the spaces I have been working so hard
to try to make fade away. Days come and go,
and I find myself either allowing the grief to
take hold of me or fighting hard against the
current to keep my head above water.
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Elephants and Tea - December 2021

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