“After the holidays, what now?”

Did you experience a jumble of emotions during the holidays? Do you feel like you'll never sort out all your feelings? Does it seem like your family members and friends just can't seem to understand how you feel? Is it hard for you to feel optimistic about the future? If you were nodding your head as you read these questions, you may be going through the grieving process.
The first holiday season after the death of a loved one can be very difficult, in fact, each holiday holds its own memories that bring new challenges into your life. You can’t successfully put grief aside, ease your way around it, or ignore its effects on your life. You can never run fast enough to get away from it or work hard enough to avoid thinking about it. If you don’t work through grief in a healthy way, you will probably never see much improvement. As impossible as it seems, you may even find that your life becomes worse.
As you walk forward through the grieving process, you will need help and encouragement. A GriefShare support group program is a place where you can interact with people who have gone through the grief process after losing a spouse, child, parent, sibling, friend, or other loved one. You will find people you can call on when you just need to talk. Some of them may even become good friends. Every relationship is different and no one knows exactly what another is experiencing, but many of the feelings are similar enough that you will begin to notice that you are feeling more hopeful about the days to come.
Hope comes from realizing that others have survived deep losses and somehow found a new normal. None of them have forgotten his or her loved one. They still have moments when they feel the pain of their loss as deeply as they ever did, but those moments have become fewer and farther between. Sometimes, they will cry with you as you tell them about the one you lost. Other times, one of you will describe a happy memory of a lost loved one that will bring smiles, maybe even laughter.
If you would like to know more about GriefShare and our weekly meetings, please call 706 557-2120.
Join us for worship at Centennial Baptist Church, 5321 Brownwood Road, Rutledge, GA 30663; www.centennialbaptist.org; 706-557-2120.

Printed in the January 10, 2013 edition