We are in the process of written interviews with some individuals in our life. We are asking a number of people the same three questions in order to showcase the broad spectrum of grief- what we learn from it, how our perceptions of it have changed, etc. We are excited to post the sixth in the series.

The three questions posed to each participant are:

1. What is your experience with grief?
2. What were your perceptions of grief before?
3. How have they changed or been proven true?

Thanks to Larissa Rossen for being real with us and sharing her thoughts on each of these questions.

1. What is your experience with grief?

A quote by Judith Viorst sums up, for me, the losses and grief that I have inevitably experienced by journeying through life nearly four decades. “We lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on… Our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our… losses of… dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety – and the loss of our younger self.”

2. What were my perceptions of grief before?

Until the loss of my son Brayden, I had not quite fully understood the depth of pain and grief of losing one’s child inside of you. One of the perceptions I had was that grief got better with time. That is, as time moved on, I believed that grief would also gradually become more bearable.

3. How have my perceptions changed or proven true?

My views have since changed and I now understand that time moves on, but life is forever changed, after the loss of a child. Grief does not get “better” with time, but rather we learn ways to live with the pain in a way that integrates the loss into our beating heart and the very fabric of our lives.