by Benjamin Allen | Jun 12, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss
How deep does pain go? Is there a limit to the expanse of my hurt? How much pain can someone take, and then, what takes over? Sorrow sometimes seems endless. I have not found a way to navigate around the emotional weight of loss in the doing of a day. I am unable to...
by Benjamin Allen | Jun 9, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss
Loss was changing me, but it felt like I was drifting away from everything I once was. When I went to Hawaii many years ago I was warned about kayaking alone. He said every now and then the currents change and it takes a kayak out beyond the island. The kayaker...
by Benjamin Allen | May 16, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss
There is a residue that resides within me. Memory that has yet to find its way into my past. What I went through is still going through me. When I am in stillness I still feel what was felt years ago as if it was right now. And in that stillness the dust settles...
by Benjamin Allen | May 15, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss
It lives in the subterranean world of secret sorrow. While those around me were getting “over it” I was just getting “into it.” There is a difference between grieving in solitude or solitary confinement. Invisible bars surrounded me. I couldn’t get out in my solitary...
by Benjamin Allen | May 14, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss
Technically, the term “walkabout” is what the Australian Aborigines youth do as a right of passage. They spend six months immersed in their lineage on a spiritual quest. I use the term walkabout as what I do in my wanderings in the Afterloss. It is a wandering through...
by Benjamin Allen | May 13, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss
He did not live to see his first year, but I honor every year on the very first day I held him and the first day he held me. Our dance was so brief, but our song continues. He lived on this earth for eight and a half months and lives in me every day. When Bryan died...
