Loss

 

 

I listened to an old "On Being" podcast recently. It's the one with Rachel Naomi Remen talking about how we live with loss. The entire podcast is well worth your time and can be had by clicking on Dr Remen's name above. A couple points stood out for me because either I saw them impacting my own life directly or the lives of people close to me.  "The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life."   ~ "Our first response to loss is to try and fix it. When we are in the presence of a loss that cannot be fixed, which is a great many losses, we feel helpless and uncomfortable, and we have a tendency to run away; either emotionally or actually, distance ourselves. And fixing is too small a strategy to deal with loss."   ~   "Most people try to hold onto the thing that is no longer part of their lives, and they stop themselves in their lives, in that way. I have come to see loss as a stage in a process. It’s not the bottom line. It’s not the end of the story. What happens next is very, very important."

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