You wonder when you and your life will get back to normal.  Family and friends say to you, “We can’t wait until you are your old self again.”

 The reality is you will never be the same again.  You are different because of your loss.  Normal life or what use to be normal no longer exists.  This is your new reality of life.  This is your different life.

 Everything in life is now different, and it is hard to comprehend that nobody else sees how different life has become.  You feel different, act different, and when you look in the mirror you don’t recognize yourself.  Grief has changed you.  It has changed every aspect of life as you have known it.

 Relationships are different.  You notice some people avoid you.  They do not know how to deal with grief and loss, so they do not interact with you.  Your interactions seem more surface level out of fear of releasing the deep grief onto somebody who will not be compassionate and understand.

 If your loss was a spouse, you have lost your identity as a couple.  We live in a couple’s world and being half of a couple feels uncomfortable and unwelcome.  You feel alone in trying to make decisions having nobody to talk through the issues.  Also, a spouse usually holds many roles – spouse, friend, lover, companion, confidant, and more.  The emptiness in your life is vast because no one person can fill all these roles now.  Life is different, and developing new relationships in the grief is overwhelming because you don’t feel like being social. Where could you search for people to fill these roles in your life anyhow?  You have no clue.  Most of the time we who grieve, have to reach out to people to form new relationships.  Others have gone on with their lives and not included us. They may have asked in the beginning of our grief and we turned them down because we were not ready to be social.  Now, when we seek these relationships, nobody is asking and it becomes harder to begin this different life.

 If your loss was a parent, you lost the relationship with your past, your childhood and the foundation of your life.  You feel like an orphan no matter your age.  Your parents may have been your main support system.  They were who you went to for guidance and advice.  You now become the older generation when you lose our parents.  The memories and foundation is still firm and now you are the one who has to build upon it and that is different.

 If your loss was a child, you have lost the relationship with your future.  Your dreams have vanished and your hope of instilling your values and legacy is gone.  You may feel an emptiness within and a loss of purpose to your life.  Your dreams of being a parent are shattered.  You may have also lost the connection with your child’s friendships and the busyness of activities.  Now what is life?

 If your loss was a dear friend, you have lost a companion and confidant.  You lost the person whom you share the joys and sorrows of life, who you call or text to tell something funny or so off the wall.  You have lost the person who gets you, accepts you and keeps you grounded.  How do you even begin to develop a new friendship?

 If your loss was from the circumstances of life, you have lost your hope for your own future.  Your trust and confidence in a better life may have disappeared.  You dreamed your life would be filled with joy, laughter, good and the feeling of fulfillment, but your loss makes you question if there is any good in the world.  Life is different and not what you had hoped.

All of these losses make your life different.  Grief continues in the different.  There is no normal or new normal.  It is all different.  Nothing returns to the way it was.  Your relationships are different and so are you.  Grief continues with you in this different.  It never leaves, it just takes on different forms and intensities.

 Different isn’t bad, it’s just different.  Learning to live in the different takes time.  It comes with acceptance.  You cannot change what has happened.  It happened.  It was real.  Now what do I do?  How do I live in this new chapter of life?  It is not what you chose or want, but it is what you have so you take one step and live in that moment.  Then you take another, and focus on the moment.  Soon you have put moments together and create a life in this different.

 “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”                                                  2 Corinthians 5:17  (RSV)