“Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er fraught heart and bids it break.” William Shakespeare

I first read these words while attending the memorial service of a little boy named Dylan. Those words resounded a great truth for me that I had discovered somewhere along my journey of grief-the more I could talk or write about my loss, the more evident my release and recovery from grief became.

 This past year was a year of epiphanies for me in many facets of my life-in parenting, in my faith and especially in grief recovery. Of course, it is the one regarding grief that I will speak of now.

 It was most simplistic and more physical but resounded yet again, the truth of Sir Shakespeare’s words. We’ve all done it; You may have done it while stumbling out of bed at night, or jumping up and racing to get to the phone in a hurry or even just suddenly remembering that “thing” you had to do or didn’t do or whatever.  Anyway, away you go, and the next thing you know, you’re suddenly speaking in tongues or at the other end of the spectrum, shaming, even sailors, with your verbage. Yep, you guessed it- you have stumped your toe!  There doesn’t have to be anyone present and you start making sounds, audible or not.

 Well, that was me one day, scurrying through my house; no one else at home and there went the toe and out came the sounds. For me,it was  more of the moaning and groaning category but nevertheless, quite the noise spectacle.  It was somewhere in the midst of the noise I was making combined with the hopping around and holding on to whatever piece of furniture was nearest that I had what I’ve termed a “grief epiphany”-pain produces sound; it requires sound; it demands; it wants acknowledgement.

Think about it for a moment all of you migraine sufferers, kidney stone passers, you victims of gallbladders, biting babies and paper cuts. The list is endless but the end result is the same. The physical body innately, inherently, involuntarily wants to cry, shout, scream, groan or moan when it feels pain. It just does.

 All of this to say, that I believe it to be the exact same with the emotional part that exists within all of us.  There is release, relief and recovery in giving words to your sorrow.  I have experienced it personally and I have seen it occur in others.  The Grief Recovery Outreach Program that I have been trained in, has that very truth at it’s core.  You write it, see it, say it, hear it and somehow, it happens-not suddenly, not mystically nor magically, but slowly and surely it happens-recovery from your grief. 

I love what one lady shared,” I find myself singing more and crying less.”  My hope for anyone grieving is for them to find their way to that very same place, to be in the shower one morning, to hear someone humming and realize that “it’s them!;”that in place of the unspoken words of grief that they have replayed in their mind countless times, they find a song stuck in their head. It may be the theme song to The Golden Girls or Gilligan’s Island; it doens’t matter; it’s a song and it’s a sign of recovery.

To Humming in the shower!