Truce 

   I have learned a great deal in my time as a grieving mother. Nearly ten years have passed, and I have learned as much about it, as I have myself. Although I feel my journey still has much to teach me, I no longer feel a stranger to this rebuilt version of myself. Although she is not familiar to the one I've known my whole life, I have a deeper understanding of her than I ever did my former self. Ive learned that the stages of grief that so aptly describe the process of other losses in my life, lack in one area in comparison to the loss of my son. Acceptance. I do not feel, at least at this stage in my journey, that there is ever an acceptance to what has transpired, but rather a surrender to what cannot be changed. A cease fire, to no longer fight against each step as though there is a choice in the matter. A truce. 

Truce 

Grief inhabits you. Possesses you, like a dark entity, unknown. 

It's a living creature that takes you over from the inside, consumes you, and every fabric of your being. 

Grief leaves behind a carcass of a former self, a former life. 

At times it lays dormant within you, taking over when it desires and leaving you helpless to its throws. 

Grief creates an anger that festers under the surface, roaring and rearing its ugly head with every emotion, until they are virtually impossible to tell apart from one another. 

It isn't until we learn to live with this being, coexist, surrender to it, that we can begin to rebuild a new version of ourselves. One where the new being and the beast inside live in peace with each other, knowing one will never exist without the other again. They will show each other grace during darker times, surrendering the struggle of power, giving way to a truce. 

JLD 2025