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Harsh Realities

January 25, 2023

Message From a Reader: “Any tips?”

January 24, 2023

Back to Work After Loss

Grief & Laundry

January 23, 2023

She is a Woman with a Mother in Heaven

January 3, 2023

When Miles Don’t Matter–A Daughter’s Love

December 16, 2022

Carrying a Heavy Load: Grief & Love

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Be patient with yourself. 💜 © Chelsea Ohlemill

Be patient with yourself. 💜
© Chelsea Ohlemiller: www.hopeandharshrealities.com (link in bio) Follow Happiness, Hope & Harsh Realities on FB for more content.
#grief #griefquotes #griefandloss #griefjourney #griefsupport #griefawareness #motherlessdaughter #motherlessdaughters #losingamother #normalizegrief #grieftruth #loss

I remember thinking I’d never laugh again. I rem

I remember thinking I’d never laugh again. I remember thinking I’d never smile again or breathe without heartbreak and pain.

I remember thinking I’d never feel true happiness again. How can you laugh and smile and experience joy while holding immense grief? How can you enjoy life, when you feel like the world has ended?

Can you live with both grief and happiness?
Can you live with both heartbreak and joy?

At first, grief overshadows every other feeling and emotion. Time changes that. Time shifts grief’s power and influence. After the initial pain and manipulation of grief, life begins to contain both happiness and loss. Both grief and joy. Both heartbreak and love. Intricate blends of diverse feelings and emotions.

One day I smiled again.
And I laughed.
And I enjoyed life.
And I felt happy again.
And guilty.
Grief is delicate and confusing.
Grief is consuming and powerful.
It acts as a harsh leader, until you learn how to partner with it.

When you collaborate with grief and accept it’s influence, you find laughter again. And joy, and fun, and adventure. You don’t lose the ache or sadness or heartache. You simply exchange the emptiness for a partnership of intricate and diverse harsh realities and hope.

Once you understand the permanent companionship of grief.
You breathe again.
You laugh and smile and dance again.
You live again.

After grief, happiness changes and transforms, but it still exists.
After grief, joy looks different and feels different, but it still exists.

After you understand grief, after you learn from its existence, you learn a different way to smile, laugh, and live again. Different, but still important and beautiful.

xox, Chels

© Chelsea Ohlemiller: www.hopeandharshrealities.com (link in bio) Follow Happiness, Hope & Harsh Realities on FB for more content.
#grief #griefquotes #griefandloss #griefjourney #griefsupport #griefawareness #motherlessdaughter #motherlessdaughters #losingamother #normalizegrief #grieftruth #loss

It’s not a mountain. Not a hill. 💗 © Chelse

It’s not a mountain. Not a hill. 💗
© Chelsea Ohlemiller: www.hopeandharshrealities.com (link in bio) Follow Happiness, Hope & Harsh Realities on FB for more content.
#grief #griefquotes #griefandloss #griefjourney #griefsupport #griefawareness #motherlessdaughter #motherlessdaughters #losingamother #normalizegrief #grieftruth #loss

💗 © Chelsea Ohlemiller: www.hopeandharshrealit

💗
© Chelsea Ohlemiller: www.hopeandharshrealities.com (link in bio) Follow Happiness, Hope & Harsh Realities on FB for more content.
#grief #griefquotes #griefandloss #griefjourney #griefsupport #griefawareness #motherlessdaughter #motherlessdaughters #losingamother #normalizegrief #grieftruth #loss

Every. Single. Day. 💜 © Chelsea Ohlemiller: ww

Every. Single. Day. 💜
© Chelsea Ohlemiller: www.hopeandharshrealities.com (link in bio) Follow Happiness, Hope & Harsh Realities on FB for more content.
#grief #griefquote #griefquotes #griefandloss #griefjourney #griefsupport #griefawareness #motherlessdaughter #motherlessdaughters #losingamother #normalizegrief #grieftruth #loss

When my mother passed, my life paused and everythi

When my mother passed, my life paused and everything suddenly seemed much larger and intimidating than it had before. Overwhelmed with fresh grief, I let mundane household tasks become completely unattended to. I wasn’t trying to be lazy, I simply crumbled at the thought of anything that would leave me alone with my thoughts and my pain and my new reality.

Laundry was one of those lonely activities.

Instead of handling daily chores, I looked for an easy route– anything to lighten the load and the responsibility. Each day, I would wash and dry my family’s clothes and then dump them in our spare bedroom, out of sight. Then, each morning, I’d venture to the pile, choose an outfit for everyone and carry on about our day.

And each morning I’d be overwhelmed with the shame of collecting clean clothes from the floor of a spare bedroom, yet each morning there I would be doing just that. Until one day, a month or two after my mother’s funeral, when I decided I could no longer avoid the task— for my mental health, for our family’s organization and for any hope of regaining normalcy. The laundry had to be done– completely, from start to finish.

Tears fell as I sat down in the middle of clothing-made mountains. The silence felt deafening. I was suddenly alone with my pain and my grief. I was alone, so so alone, in this new new version of life.

Immediately I was reminded why I had been avoiding this simple task. I felt vulnerable. I felt fragile. I felt like I was sitting face-to-face with the realities that I’d been working so diligently to hide and avoid— realities like watching my mother take her last breaths and be lowered into the earth. Realities I still hadn’t accepted. Realities that became unavoidable when sitting alone, in silence, completing my to-do’s.

Folding laundry was reminding me that no matter how much it felt like life had stopped, it hadn’t. That pile of laundry reminded me that ready-or-not, life was moving forward. The world was still spinning and avoiding my household duties wouldn’t change that truth, even as harsh as it seemed to keep living…CONTINUED IN COMMENTS…

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