SEASONS: MY JOURNEY THROUGH GRIEF
02/14/2020
Seasons...
To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under Heaven...
A time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
--- Ecclesiastes 3:1 & 4
Surviving Grief
I lost my husband of forty-one years to sarcoidosis, a disease that few people know much about. My beloved struggled through a year of fatigue, anemia, and other health issues, with doctors at the county hospital telling us he was doing just fine." When he died, I went through all the stages of grief, from anger and depression to acceptance, and I realized that our good times far outweighed the bad. So I turned to journaling, and the 800 pages I wrote in the last three years became my book, Seasons: My Journey through Grief.
The Value of Journaling
I found my comfort in writing. Before my husband died, I prayed for healing for him and patience for me. After, I communed with God, my thoughts and nature as I wrote pages nearly everyday, using the words of others, including the Bible, to inspire and console me. They gave me wisdom and courage to help me come to terms with my loss without baring my soul and tears in public. As Oprah said, "Keeping a journal will change your life in ways that you'd never imagine.
After two years, I had turned my journals into my fifth book, Seasons. I selected my best passages and organized them into four sections: summer, autumn, winter, and fall, recounting his death and the year that followed. This is the true story of my journey through my own seasons of grief.
If you've lost a loved one, especially a spouse, you might gain some insight from my journey. Or it might be an excellent gift for someone you know who has lost a member of their family.
Seasons:My Journey through Grief, available in paperback ($12.99) and ebook ($2.99) Amazon.com.
