The Sun Still Rises: Surviving and Thriving After Grief and Loss

For a couple months after my wife passed away, I had been thinking about going to some sort of retreat. In August (four months after my wife passed away) I booked four days in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It was not a vacation, it was not an escape, it was what I referred to as a retreat. Now what do I mean by retreat? I felt I had gotten to a certain point where I needed to just sit back and process everything that I have gone through and experienced over the last four months. Clear my head and kind of reevaluate where I was and what I was doing. When I told friends and family that I was going away to the beach for four days their first question was “by yourself?” Of course the answer was “yes”. They asked me the purpose of my beach visit and told I them I was going to a retreat. I think there were a few people who thought I'd gone a little bit off the deep end (but that's OK.) I decided before I went to the beach that I was not going to socialize, I was not going to talk to anyone except to check into my hotel and order meals. Each day I went for a long walk on the beach in the morning and in the late afternoon, and I sat on the beach each day in a beach chair with an umbrella and just thought for hours and hours. Even though I was surrounded by people it seemed as if I was in my own little space surrounded by my favorite sights and sounds of the ocean. It was almost as if I went away to a mountaintop monastery or a log cabin in the woods. During that time I also wrote a journal of everything that I had experienced over the last three months. I wrote to my wife and poured out my heart. I wrote everything that I wanted to say to her that I did not get to say. I told her what I was sorry for; I told her what I wish we had done. I told her that I was sorry she had experienced such a bad childhood and was in pain. I told her what I was sad about. I told her what I was angry about and what I didn't understand. This was all in writing. I sat in a lawn chair with a baseball hat on and dark glasses crying much of the time. Because it was hot and I was sweating, and had on the sun glasses, no one knew I was crying. I cried buckets of tears that week.

I was so glad that I decided to take the retreat to the beach. I felt like I got a lot of issues resolved and settled in my head, and was able to properly frame everything that had happened. The retreat was truly for me a transformation.I came back from my trip with a lighter load, clear thinking and I just felt so much better. I called my daughter on the way home to tell her that I was on my way back. When she asked how my trip went, I told her “I don't know how to explain this but I feel 1000% better.” So the retreat was very cathartic for me. One of the things you might want to strongly think about if you have suffered a loss is to schedule a retreat for you. Pick a favorite place and geography that you find beautiful and peaceful, and go there with the express purpose of just thinking, meditating, praying, reflecting on your loss.

I also strongly recommend that you journal during that time to process your thoughts. Take a notebook and a couple of pens and pour out your thoughts and emotions and heart out on the paper. Just dump out everything you're thinking, feeling, and processing since your loss. It made a big positive difference for me. If for some reason you're not in the position to be able to go away for a retreat you can certainly do the same thing locally. You can go for a hike into the woods, stay out all day, sit by a lake in an isolated area or go up in the mountains. The idea is just to be surrounded by beauty and nature and not distracted by people, phones, computers, and e-mails.