[Rivière]

Grief is always such a difficult thing for humans to process. We go through most, if not all the stages of grief; shock, guilt, anger, progression.. and so on. It's only natural that you feel guilty for feeling happy. Someone in your life has passed away and you feel bad for actually feeling good about something. How can you feel any other way? It's perfectly normal.

I remember when my nan died years ago. I didn't know how to process how I felt. I'd never experienced someone close to me dying before. In order to deal with the pain I drowned myself in work. I went back to college and studied full time. I actually did a pretty bad job because I was only doing it to distract myself from how I was feeling. I only went there to be around other people and not feel so isolated and alone. I only went there just so I could do something... anything to make the feelings of loss go away. My nan wasn't exactly the greatest of people. In fact she was pretty awful. But she still had a huge influence on my life regardless, and I had just lost her. She was gone and I would never see her again.

I think from that whole experience, I learnt that it's ok to allow ourselves to experience pain. It's natural to try and drown ourselves with something to keep ourselves busy because we just feel so unhappy that we don't know how to deal with the pain at the moment. The problem is that we're only delaying the inevitable. It's ok to allow yourself to be upset. It's ok to feel angry and depressed. It's ok to want to feel like you just want to yell all the time and not stop. You just lost somebody. It's ok not to be ok.

The site has so many great resources we offer to members, but don't forget you're one too. You have access to some great resources like this one. Even if it doesn't help all that much right now, at least it'll have given you a brief moment to help pass the time.

Be however you want to be, and feel whatever you want to feel.