As I write this, I’m laying in a field of grass at a park near my house. My son is happily playing with some newly made friends a few feet away. A cool breeze dances through the leaves of the trees overhead, creating a beautiful symphony of whispers. I listen to bursts of laughter peppered in the conversations of the kids who have joined together to make the most of their short time at the park before the sun sets and they have to head home.

All of this makes me want to pause and savor this moment.

As adults, we get so caught up in the trappings of work and assumed responsibilities that we often lose sight of what it is we’re actually living for.

Many of us inadvertently end up living to work. We feel pressure to provide our children a better life than what we had. But must do so in a world where the cost of living seems to be on an endless upward trajectory. Society teaches us to define our worth by the importance of our profession and the amount of money we make. We work a ridiculous amount of hours at the expense of quality time with those we love and hold dear.

Many of us try to numb the growing pain and frustration we feel by filling our time with distractions and surrounding ourselves with “things” we think will make us happy. And we hope they will somehow fill the void — oblivious to the fact that the void is caused when we neglect the actual “living” part of life.

It is the part of living that kids instinctively get: making the most of the time left before the sun sets.

Sometimes we are faced with very sobering wake-up calls that point out this void and error of our ways. For most of you reading this, it was the death of someone so dear to you that life as you knew it came to an abrupt end.

While we’ve always known death to be inevitable, we now know all too well that the sun may set long before we are prepared or ready for it. For most of us, that wake-up call caused us to lose our taste for the frivolities of life.

We no longer seem to have the patience for superficial relationships, gossip, or activities that have no apparent point other than filling time. Many of us now crave purpose and meaning in everything we do. For we know that the sun may drop from the sky without a moment’s notice. We want to make the rest of our days count.

Grief does that to us. And yet, after losing someone we can’t imagine living without, we seem to stop living all together. We simply exist.

In its first iteration, grief is too overwhelming to do much of anything except try to get from one day to the next in one piece. We’re still here. Our hearts still inexplicably beat. We somehow still draw a breath. But we remain suspended in our bubble of grief. Not able to touch the world around us that we once knew.

So here we are with a new conundrum. We have seen the error of our past ways. We have realized that life is fleeting and meant to be lived to its fullest, appreciated for the gift that it is, and filled with purpose and meaning.

And yet it still feels impossibly out of reach.

This time, instead of the trappings of work and responsibility, we are trapped inside impossible, smothering pain.

We hear from others who’ve been in our shoes that these intense feelings won’t last. We’re told it won’t always be this painful. It’s just that now is our time to grieve. Now is a time to lean on others for support and guidance. Now is a time to look within. 

There is no timetable for how long this phase of grief should last. Everyone is unique. And so is our individual pace of grieving.

As for me…

It’s been many years since my daughter, Margareta, died. It is only NOW that I finally feel ready to move onto my next phase of grief. Call it Grief 2.0 if you will.

In hindsight, Grief 1.0 for me was all about coming to terms with a life without my daughter in it.

It has been a slow and difficult process. I was focused entirely on how to take my pain and learn how to transform it into opportunities for personal growth. It was about learning what my purpose and passions are. Learning to redefine relationships with those around me. Deciding what “living” really means for me in this new landscape of my life.

And as much as I felt and thought I had come so far over these last few years, I realize now I wasn’t really living yet. Oh…I talked a good talk. Experiencing insight after insight, I was an example of hope to those still in the earliest part of Grief 1.0.

But I hadn’t yet reached the point where I was ready to stop talking about what it means to live and actually start living. 

With various circumstances coming into play, I took a hiatus from writing about grief. My husband pointed out that it had become all consuming to me. I had begun to feel obligated to produce posts on a regular basis and became addicted to looking at how many people were reading and sharing my insights. The more I felt I was helping others, the more I felt my life held purpose and meaning.

But at what expense? At the neglect of the relationships that mean the most to me?

During that time, I took advantage of an opportunity to instead write about how to live your best life — the one you’ve always dreamed of but never knew how to actually achieve. I wrote about ways to overcome all the self-imposed obstacles that keep you trapped and immobilized in a state of fear. Fear of failing. Fear of trying in the first place.

It was an eye-opening experience. Here I was giving other people motivation to take those first real steps towards “living,” and yet I wasn’t doing it myself. The truth is that I hadn’t been ready to.

For me, Grief 2.0 is all about taking what I’ve learned and actually start living this life until my sun sets.

It is about taking action on everything I’ve learned about what it means to truly live. It is about seeking new experiences. New adventures. New ways of improving my closest relationships. It is finding the balance between using my passions and skills to help the greater good while also using them to benefit me, my family, and my friends.

It is about doing all these things while still honoring Margareta and recognizing how she’s inspired this new phase of living. Though I’m not exactly sure what my future path will look like, I finally feel I have the actionable tools and knowledge to explore what lies ahead.

. . .

Back in the park, the sun is beginning its final descent to the horizon where it will soon disappear.

My son and I are about to head home. He has enjoyed his time at the park with his new friends. That he may never see them again does not matter. What matters to him is that he made the most of the time he had while he was there.

And from here on out…that is what I intend to do as well.