Our stories are at the heart of our grief journeys – the stories of our loss, the stories of our love, the bitter-sweet stories of our sadness and remembrance.

We tell the stories again and again.  They evolve as we do.  Healing comes so slowly, in such small increments, that the evolution of our stories can be a valuable benchmark for where we are in the process of defining who we are becoming and what matters in life after our loss.

Remember the first time you told your story to someone who didn’t know – or someone you didn’t know?  It was likely terrifying . . . and cathartic.  Early on the stories tend to focus on how they died.  They give voice to the often complex, conflicting, horrifying stew of emotions we wrestle with when our loved one dies – especially when they die as a result of substance or suicide.

In time, as we learn to mourn, other stories creep in – ‘divine spark’ stories.  Those stories remind us of the essence of our loved ones.  We remember the things that make them so uniquely themselves.  The things that are at the heart of our love.  We honor them and, in a very real sense, bring them back to life in our heart and memory.   

As Dr. Alan Wolfelt observed in his article “Reflecting on the Awesome Power of “Telling the Story – Going Backward Before We Go Forward”:

When we are in mourning, we heal ourselves as we tell the tale. This is the awesome power of the story. Yet, in our fast-paced, efficiency-based culture, which often lacks understanding of the role of hurt in healing, many people do not understand the value of storying. Honoring stories requires that we slow down, turn inward and embrace our own and others’ pain. 

Along the way, we hope to be blessed with companions who don’t mind hearing the stories again – if we’re really fortunate, they perceive the evolution in our stories and come to appreciate the healing in our hurt. If they’re peers in loss, we bless them in return by truly hearing their stories.

Sometimes the stories are short, maybe just an observation of how they’d have loved a meal, a sunset, a bird in flight, a song . . .maybe just their name.  It doesn’t matter – just appreciate the awesome power of telling the story, again and again.