Even if you've been raised by wolves, at some point you will experience grief. It's natural. Losing a child, however, is not.

Music: Moby - 'Spaired Long' used by permission from MobyGratis - I am most grateful, thank you!

A while ago I lost my dad to ALS. And 5 months after that I lost my youngest son in a car accident - he was 15.

I'd have to say my biggest challenge in coming to terms with all of that loss has been getting used to the idea of being sad. We all experience grief at some point in our lives, and while losing a child is certainly painful, the coming to terms with the sadness and making the grief okay has been my biggest challenge.

From a spiritual perspective I know that I'll see my family members again. But in the meantime I'm still EarthBound and I miss them physically. I miss them on this plane. I miss being able to give them hugs and joke with them and whenever thoughts of my son come up, they're always good thoughts.

In the meantime, I've had to make friends with my grief. I would say the most difficult period was a couple of years ago when I entered a phase of what I can only describe as complete futility. I felt like there was no point in continuing. And even though I wasn't suicidal I was completely unmotivated to do anything. I had absolutely no wind in the sails. Any kind of undertaking, no matter what, seemed pointless.

So I went through a period where I did nothing.

Now I've said that, I realize that's not entirely true: because what I was actually doing at that time was entering a new phase of my life, where I was becoming accustomed to the notion of feeling sadness. It took me about 6 months to get through this period of despondency where I was completely unmotivated. It was certainly a type of depression, but it was different from a depressive episode in the sense that it's not that I was feeling hopeless about my life; it's that I was feeling hopeless about life, period.

Why the f*** do our children have to die? Why do I have to be the one to experience that? It didn't seem fair.

Many people have said to me they can't understand what it must be like, and I've found that a lot of the process of losing a child has been in managing other people's reactions to my son's death. I have had to come to terms with when I see somebody struggling to say something when they're talking about this event that happened, and the people pleaser in me wants to say: "no, it's okay!" ...because in one sense, it is ok! But in another sense, I can see that they're being triggered into a lot of fear - particularly if they have kids themselves. So I had to accustom myself to that paradigm.

More than that though, is this feeling that losing my son has, in one way, deepened my sense of spirituality. I say that because I remember I lost my grandmother when my boys were very little, and on the day she died I felt her move through me. Having lost my son I very often have the experience of feeling him even though I know that he's not walking around on this planet, but he is still very much here.

The soul is eternal. Each of us is on a mission to advance our soul - including my son. That's how I know I'll see him again, as well as my dad and my grandparents and everybody else in my life.

I really do understand that death is just the continuation of life and a normal part of living. Through my own spiritual path I've come to no longer fear death.

So even though this video is about grief I always end up talking about all these other things, because they're all so interconnected. I touched on a lot of things here, and I hope you could follow along with me. If this video meant something you please Like and Subscribe for more of my videos. Until the next time, I'll see you soon :-)

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