THE GRIEFGLOW MANIFESTO: WHY THIS BLOG?

This blog finds its roots in the losses of my life and my slow, stumbling, but steady path towards healing. Of all the resources I explored when I was newly bereaved and deep in grief, the most powerful ones were those that simply shared someone else's story. The least helpful were those that either tried to fix or change me, or communicated with such mutedness and sadness they seemed to make my own sadness worse. In reacting to such times, I came up with something I called the GriefGlow manifesto, which goes as follows. I am pleased to share it and some glimpses of my journey with you. So, the GriefGlow Manifesto: Because grief is never black and white. Because healing is hard enough without coloring everything around us gray. Because we're just sad, not broken. Because we are a community, even when we feel the most alone. Because a picture is worth a thousand words when we have no words to say. Because we don't need to be changed, fixed, taught, or hurried. Because being vulnerable isn't the same as being powerless. Because our story isn't over. Because the world is as beautiful as it is painful. And because though a little bit of beauty can't change the pain today, it may help us toward healing tomorrow.



Sunday, August 15, 2010

JOANNA TROLLOPE ON LOVE AND LOSS

Passionate Man: A NovelBritish writer Joanna Trollope writes family, love and change with warmth, delicacy, and a wise understanding of the complexities of modern lives. Two of Trollope's novels, Next of Kin and A Passionate Man, deal explicitly with themes of loss and grief. A Passionate Man, my favorite of the two, begins when its protagonist Archie Logan learns that his father, who for many years has been a widower, has begun a passionate relationship with a charming older woman. Archie is an adult with a busy, successful life, but his father's sudden transformation from parent and best friend to besotted man in love jolts him back into childlike feelings of loss, jealousy and doubt. As he struggles to accept this new perspective on his father, he begins to question himself, his marriage and career as well—questions that remain far from resolved when his father suddenly passes on. The lives and personalities in the story are rich and messy, just as in real life, and the ending is happy without being in any way glib, simplistic or pat. I suppose that's the thing that I liked best about the book: Trollope's ability to write about the way change is inevitable in human lives, as well as the way we all grieve, heal, and move on.
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