After The Exodus...A Five Part Series On Grief Management...Part Five: Acceptance

"What looks like a loss may be the very event which is subsequently responsible for helping to produce the major achievement of your life."

-Sruilly Blotnick

Part Five: Acceptance

One day it happens. We wake up, and it has all, somehow, come full circle. Maybe when we were sleeping, maybe when we were busy with the 5 stages of grief coming in and out of our life. Who knows? One thing I do know, I have grieved the loss of many things in my 43 years. Lost love, lost friends, lost family, lost material objects, lost pets, and now the loss of my first journal Ellipsis. But a small clarification needs to take place. Ellipsis on AOL has not been deleted, I can go and read past entries any time I want to, but the experience of living through it is now over. I miss the bells when someone leaves me a comment. I miss the routine, I miss the comfort zone I had come to know. I think I miss November 14th 2005 most of all. That was the day before Journal Land changed for good.

It just seems so strange that a series of decisions, probably made in a boardroom months ago, changed everything so fast. I have accepted it. I accepted it the day it happened, but I mourn the changes that have happened all the same. There is a resignation that happens when Acceptance takes place. A natural balance begins to take place and we can finally move on with life. This has been a difficult time. I have watched friendships implode over this situation. I have seen folks say and do things I never thought they would. It is a lot of pain to take in. On the other hand some folks are doing ok with the new change, and being very helpful to we who are experiencing this very troubling time. That is something I appreciate. I have found that the transition was made a lot easier as I learned to accept the help being offered me. I didn't have to be alone in this if I didn't want to be. :)

I am a girl who doesn't like change. Nope, don't like it. As I sit here typing this, memories of people, apartments, homes, an insane doll collection, some stuffed animals, some four legged creatures, some creatures with feathers, family, friends, lovers...oh the lovers...Sigh...Mr. November...Sigh...go walking through my mind, I don't feel the arrows of pain that once pierced me with the individual loss. Instead I feel a collective blue, wispy, longing. Days in the sun. Walks in the cool night rain, a game of fetch, all make me smile. My heart is full, but it doesn't ache anymore. The distortion of how things look when you are grieving is no longer there. When I write a series on the topic of grief, I always try to demonstrate something I noticed one day, just after I woke up from the experience of Anhedonia. A common everyday object may look different to us depending on what stage of grief we are in. That is why I took the same flower and altered it's appearance for each entry. Red for Anger, Blue for Denial, Deep blue for Depression, Green for Bargaining and finally the flower how it appears when we finally have the clarity of acceptance. Letting go is such a bittersweet proposition. I like what Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said about change, " For after all the best thing one can do when its raining, is let it rain." Simple, but oh so true.

-OndineMonet
"The flower Of Acceptance"
Berkeley, California
November, 29th, 2005
Evening