This month our topic of awareness is loss. Please feel free to join in the conversation on social media. We’re going to be talking about how we can support each other through heartbreaking times.
Grief comes in many guises. It can seep into our lives like a mist that gradually burns away the light or it can drop onto us wiping out our ability to make any sense.
Why…? How…? What…? We ask ourselves and others questions that bring us no comfort, no release. None of us are immune and how we find peace and reconciliation is a true test of our essence of being.
I recall a two-year period in my life where my losses were many. One tumbled after another. Grief seared into my heart and soul like white heat as my successful career was ended, my lifestyle interrupted, my status and reputation taken away, my friends left me, my health was shredded by an auto-immune disease and my home sold. I lived for quite a while in anger, disbelief and despair. Pain filled me emotionally and physically. I thought it would never end.
So much loss in such a short timespan undid me; everything I thought I was and everything I had built lay broken!
If I was to survive such devastation I needed to reach out and find the Well of Life. Only the Life Giver himself could hold me in his hands, breathe a new spirit into me and re-shape this broken pot of clay. Thankfully, I found new friendships that wrapped around me giving me room to grieve, holding me in their strength until I began to smile again and feel a renewed spirit within me.
At the Hub, we see many people who have gradually fallen into a mist that shrouds them.
They are unable to see the brightness of day and the colours of joy. They are feeling robbed of energy and zeal for living. They are bound by sadness and existing on emptiness. In essence some of the people we see are experiencing a hopelessness from loss and loneliness.
Some people come to the Hub for company and a cuppa. They seek eyes that shine in their direction and ears attending to their voices. They seek a supporting smile and comforting noises that say “I understand” and “it’s okay to feel like you do”.
A wife’s memory fading with dementia or Alzheimer’s leads one man to seek the company of friends at the Hub. He takes a short break from caring, to engage in lively conversation.
The death of a close friend led someone into the comforting, confidential conversation of a Hub pastoral carer.
The oncoming loss of her home brought despair to a woman seeking help and intervention so that her family did not suffer.
Frequently, we are visited by people who have lost their livelihood, lost relationships, lost their health. At their lowest level, they reach out to the Hub for a gentle hand of friendship.
Life can be renewed!
Reaching out to be welcomed as you are and comforted by those who know how you feel will bring you back into the light and enable you to see colour once again. I promise, because I know!
Written by
Jo-Ann Hughes, Executive Director, Harrogate Hub