The loss of someone you love is a very hard and traumatic thing to live with every day. The favorite saying “give it time, things will be better. Time heals all wounds….” those are the furthest words from truth. Time does not heal all wounds. A hole in your heart can not be filled with an artificial replacement for the love of someone that once lived there. As time passes you learn to live with the loss. As time passes you learn to live with the new life without the person you loved. Life does go on with or without you. Life does go on with or without the person you lost. Life will never stop because you are suffering a pain that consumes your life. Eventually you will have to join the land of the living again or forever be lost to yourself. Even if the person you lost is still walking this earth……..

Chewed fingernails; weight loss or gain; self destruction; pushing away from beauty; withdrawing into your own comfortable misery; lashing out at the love filled hand holding you up; wearing a smile to camouflage the rage you feel inside; empty of all tears or emotion that once allowed compassion to the surface…….. this is a story as old as time. It is a story that many of us share but keep hidden, like we are the only ones that suffer these ailments of shame. Fear of judgement to the imperfection of our lives is crippling. Fear of anyone seeing the pain that causes such ugliness to enrapture our soul is frightening.

Exposing and sharing our secret vulnerabilities and torments seem so painful and life shattering, in fact, it is. Why keep the pain inside? The pain is what causes things to shatter in the first place. In reality, we are not alone or the only ones that go through painful events but we are the only ones that isolate ourselves from those that can and want to help. Free your heart and soul of what ever malignancy took hold. It is a choice you can and must make if you want to walk among the living again.

Be brave. Stand up. Open your eyes. Peel away the barriers from your heart. Allow yourself to be loved again. Choose to love. It is a choice we make to embrace the love that surrounds us or allow the pain to consume the space in our heart. Rejoin the land of the living and walk in the sunlight again. Feel the warmth you have forgotten feels so good.

The Land of the Living is where life beckons to you. It misses you. It needs you. It is waiting for you. It will always welcome you back.