Sharing your story

I just finished reading Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking", the account of the year after the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne.

Reading it? Excuse me: I meant devouring.

It's a remarkable memoir, clear and spot-on in its description of many common experiences of those in grief: a sense of confusion, trying to make sense of the loss, attempting to piece the story of a life, the starts and fits of putting the pieces of one's own life back together.

So much of what Didion writes in her book struck a chord in me, and my own memories of the year after a death in my family - the death of my mother. The title and key theme - a year of magical thinking - reminded me of my own convoluted thought processes during the year after my mom died. Like Didion, my own magical thinking wasn't isolated to the first couple of months after the death. The weeks before and after my birthday - 11 months after my mom died - I kept checking the mailbox for the birthday card I expected from her. And how rude of her not to call!

The expectation in this culture is that that one should 'get over' grief quickly and neatly. My experience is that grief is anything but timely or tidy: it will find you at inconvenient times as much as it will at times that you expect it (or not, then to surprise you later). It is easy to be isolated in our grieving, but yet the hope and the healing occurs for many of us as we connect and tell our story.

Each story is as unique as the writer and the experience. Joan Didion and C.S. Lewis are well-known as writers but we all have our tale. Jory DesJardins, in her brilliant blog Pause, wrote recently about the death of her father, Joel. Ann O'Fallon and Margaret Vaillancourt have edited an amazing book, Kiss Me Goodnight, full of stories and poems from women who lost their moms at a young age.

You don't have to be a published author to have a story to tell. How will you tell share yours? What's possible for you at this point in your grieving process when you tell your story? We invite you to share your story here too.