Youth Mental Health
Don’t Grieve, but Believe
A personal essay on grief, loss and moving forward, by TREWO youth voice Arryan Rao.
By Arryan Rao
That you will overcome
It is perfectly natural to feel what you are going through right now.
Grief is the universal emotional suffering that you feel, and it touches all of us at some point in our lives. This can happen at any time when you lose something or someone you care about, and often this feeling is overwhelming.
What grief can look like
Grieving leads to you feeling all sorts of emotions, from confused anger or shock to intense sadness and numbing disbelief. This emotional surge can disrupt your normal routine and quality of life, and you may be finding it difficult to complete actions that you used to do, such as going to work, interacting with friends and family, or even eating, sleeping, or being able to think straight. It is okay to feel like this, and there are ways for it to feel better.
Coping with grief and loss of something is one of life’s greatest challenges. While in most cases grief is associated primarily with death or loss of a loved one, like we touched on earlier, any loss can cause grief, including but not limited to:
- End of a Relationship
- Job Loss
- Major Life Changes (retirement or homelessness)
- Traumatic Events (natural disasters or post-war trauma)
- Relocation
- Loss of a Belief System
Your loss, whatever it may be, is personal to you, and there should not be any shame within you for feeling grief towards it. If what you lost was important to you and your identity, it is normal for you to grieve it.
Don’t grieve, but believe.
Arryan Rao
My own story
In this article, I will be offering insight into the loss of a loved one and how to cope with and overcome this grief. There are few things that are worse than losing someone who was close and important to you. Sources online will tell you that there are five stages of grief that one has to go through sequentially when they are grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, from personal experience I can confidently say that grief is not linear and the stages aren’t a blueprint that everyone should expect to follow.
My journey through grief began with the loss of my grandfather. Although I had seen it coming, it was still a shock when it happened. I did feel some of the emotions that come with the five stages of grief, but I mostly had to put off truly processing it until the pandemic hit. It was then that I reflected on myself, my life and relationship with my grandpa, and came to a conclusion that allowed me to move forward. It is this conclusion that I will share with you, and which is the title of this article: don’t grieve, but believe.
What I’ve come to believe
You must believe that the feeling of grief, no matter how bad it is and how it has affected you, will pass. You must believe that despite how inadequate you think your relationship with the person was or how ungrateful you might’ve felt you were, that you were enough for that person, and believe that the memories you shared were enough for both of you.
You must believe that you can feel better, that you can get better, and you must believe that they are in a better place. Wherever they are, believe that they are watching over you and that they are proud of you.
Finally, and possibly the most important point, you must believe in your friends and family, that they are always there to support and be there for you regardless of the situation. After all, at the end of the day, all that we have is each other.
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