After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have l… - David Kessler

Pain, death, and loss never feel good, but they're unavoidable in our lifetime. Yet the reality is posttraumatic growth happens more than posttraumatic stress.

don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains." — Anne Frank The common belief is that grief is all about pain. Anyone who has been in grief would certainly agree with that. But I believe there is more. There is love. Why do we believe that the pain we feel is about the absence of love? The love didn't die when the person we love died. It didn't disappear. It remains. The question is: How do we learn to remember that person with more love than pain? This is a question, not a mandate. I am the first to say that there is no getting around the pain. We have to go through it because it is an inevitable result of the separation we are experiencing. It's a brutal, forced separation. The word "bereaved" has its origins in the Old English words deprived of, seized, and robbed. That is how it feels when your loved one has been taken from you — as excruciating as if your arm had been ripped from your body. You've been robbed of what is dearest to you. The pain you feel is proportionate to the love you had. The deeper you loved, the deeper the pain. But you will find that love exists on the other side of the pain. It's actually the other face of pain.

Your life will never be the same, but happiness again is still possible. Never being happy again is a statement about the future. But no one can predict the future. All they can know for sure is that they are unhappy today. It helps to say, "I'm unhappy today," and leave it at that.