I’ve had enough emotional and mental work to know that grief is a complex and personal process. I knew as the death of a close family loved one came on the summer solstice that I needed to grieve.
I revisited the frameworks. There are the three Cs (chose, connect, communicate) for a simple framework to prioritize your needs. There are the 4 Rs Recognize Reality, Remember, Reaffirm, and Release for memorials and funerals.
And of course, the most famous remains the 5 stages of grief from Kübler-Ross’s “On Death and Dying,” the 1969 book in which she proposed the patient centered stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
I was prepared to go through all of it. And I did. The shock was immediate as soon as I learned she had passed. I was angry she was gone. I asked why someone else couldn’t have been taken instead of her. I was sad to carry on with out her. Acceptance seemed distant.
But as I started to communicate my own feelings I recognized an emotion I wasn’t prepared to encounter so soon. I felt immense joy. Losing her overwhelming made me feel grateful for the joy she’d given me in my own life.
What incredible luck I had to be a part of her life and receive so many emotional gifts as a result. The freedom she encouraged in me gave me the capacity for boundaries and needs and wants I’d never accepted fully.
And then, even though I was prepared for the possibility, she was gone and I realized she had been right. I could accept things that I’d distrusted for so many painful decades.
And here I am. And here I remain. And what she has given me is permission to thrive. Even in the immediate wake of her loss I felt lightness and ease permeate my work. I wrote my investor updates. I gave an interview to Axios Pro Rata. That interview lead to a substantial feature on my preseed venture fund chaotic.capital. I worked on my immigration policy advocacy.
I felt the joy of living a life I had chosen because someone had loved me enough to share that I could chose to be free. And that fills me with joy.