“When we lose someone we love we must learn not to live without them, but to live with the love they left behind.” – Unknown

When we experience grief in our lives, the only explanation for why grief exists there is because love existed there first. The loss of a loved one irrevocably changes us. There is no denying that. It is painful. It is scary. 

It is also a time to grow. In the face of this adversity, we learn more about ourselves and our place in the world. The lessons we learn help us transfigure the pain of grief into a force for positive change that makes the world a more beautiful place.

Resiliency

The first lesson grief teaches you is how strong you are. Once you have weathered the storm and made it through a tough time, the difficulties that you couldn’t fathom making it through no longer have the same stronghold over your life. 

Sometimes you have to experience the lows because it helps give you new perspectives on life. And sometimes, the right perspective makes all the difference. To realize this perspective is to acknowledge the resiliency you have developed, and there is profound power in this. 

Relationships

Grief brings about reminders of how precious and precarious life is. Loss makes you aware that time with those that are important to us is finite, and it is essential that we spend it wisely. Investing into relationships means doing the little things. Whether it is sending a loved one a quick text to see how they are doing, tagging them in memes that reminds you of them or surprising them with food on their front porch, you are making a world of difference in their life. Investing into our relationships also means being aware of the consequences of our actions. Consciously keeping this in mind helps us to refrain from doing or saying things that may harm our relationships. With this awareness, we find the strength to love harder. 

Conclusion

Embracing these two lessons can help us transform our lives in the face of loss. When we embrace them, we make a conscious decision to grow into the strongest versions of ourselves and transform the grief and pain we experienced into an agent of positive change. Doing this transforms the way we see life, with this new found attitude changing our words and actions towards others. Little by little, we become a beacon of light and love to those that we cross paths with. We find ourselves becoming more patient, more generous, more compassionate, more kind, more… loving. 

Loving others is not easy. But as anything worthwhile in life, it is rewarding. There is no better way to honour the life of a loved one than to spread their love to the rest of the world. These are the ways in which we honour and celebrate the lives of our loved ones.