The Loneliness of the Changing Seasons 🍃🍂

I once asked the question on my social media pages:

“What is something you wish other people understood about grief?”

There was an overwhelmingly high number of people who had this tender and honest insight to share:

Grief is lonely.

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

My heart ached to read this response because I know that so many of us can deeply relate to this statement.

It’s felt even more deeply as seasons change and we are surrounded by cyclical reminders of what we’ve lost: holidays with empty seats, store displays that make our hearts ache, and a heaviness our hearts carry around that no one else sees.

When we experience profound loss, our hearts break until they’re barely recognizable.

Grief shatters the heart at its very foundation making everything that was once so sure and comfortable feel unsafe and unsteady.

We may look the same, but in an instant, we have been changed forever.

Pieces of our identity, our security, and our stability suddenly don’t fit together in the way they used to or in the way that we always thought they would.

And there’s so much happening underneath the surface that others may not readily notice.

I wrote this poem to describe the shift that so many grieving hearts feel with the changing seasons. Maybe you will find yourself resonating with these words as well:

Photo by Mitchell McCleary on Unsplash

“There’s something about the fall,

a reawakening of grief

has occurred along with the changing leaves.

Maybe it’s the sun’s retreat

or the crisp air settling over me.

Maybe it’s the start of football season

that you would have been so excited to see.

There’s a heaviness in the air.

Does anyone feel this but me?

There’s beauty all around

but also so much grief

settling inside of me.”

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So much of our grief is happening internally, and it can leave us wondering:

“Does anyone see this but me? Does anyone feel this but me?”

As schedules get more and more packed with holiday activities and seasonal festivities, it can feel disorienting.

Everything moves so fast, and sometimes our grief just desperately wants us to slow down.

It wants us to witness the changing hues of the leaves and acknowledge the changing hurts of our hearts.

It wants us to lament and lean in to the chill of this sadness.

While it feels like everything and everyone else is looking forward with the anticipation of new seasons and celebrations, we wrestle with the tension of wanting so desperately to go back. It brings with it a weariness that most won’t see.

It can make us feel like our grief is invisible. This sometimes causes us to retreat with our grief into silence and seclusion.

In that space, we feel the additional weight of the isolation of it all. We feel the additional weight of the loneliness of it all.

If loneliness has been a big part of your experience with grief, I want you to know that your pain is seen here.

I want you to know that grief is not something that has any set timeline or stages. Our grief is unique to us. Our pain and path and process will all be unique to us. Every heart will have a different pace, and that is more than okay.

I want you to know that, although so much of grief is personal, it is my hope that these conversations help give us the chance to walk alongside one another on each of our journeys.

I want you to know that grief truly does shift and change with the changing seasons. I feel it too.

I want you to know that your grief matters and that your processing matters.

And while so many of us feel the loneliness of grief, I hope we can also feel the warmth of a hand reaching for ours when we need comfort the most and a pair of eyes meeting ours when we’ve felt the most unseen.

As a society, we tend to get uncomfortable when we talk about feeling grief or feeling lonely.

Because stepping into each other’s loneliness requires bearing witness to some deep pain.

It requires an acknowledgement that grief cannot be rushed or fixed.

It requires setting aside the desire to offer advice, and instead, offer a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on.

Grief is lonely, but maybe together, when the path feels especially hard, we can find comfort in the company of another hurting soul walking alongside us, even if it’s just for a moment.

Grief is lonely, but maybe together, we can hold space for one another’s stories and bear witness to one another’s sorrows.

Grief is lonely, but maybe together, we can find moments of support and connection that help us feel a little less alone.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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