At first there’s only shock, The incredulity, spending hours convincing yourself that This is really happening and there’s no going back, The physical reactions as your body struggles to process what your mind cannot comprehend Then, there is grief, But grief is a complicated being, Especially when tempered by trauma, And it’s not as simple as being sad, It’s a combination of shock, anger, sadness, fear, That incredulity is still there Because “how is this possible” and “this has never happened before” And it hasn’t, You’ve never lost this person before, They’ve always been there, been alive , And now they’re not And with trauma and post-traumatic stress There are panic attacks and anxiety loops And wondering if the other shoe is going to drop Now that the shoe has finally dropped and shown you how many shoes are hanging above your head right now, fully capable of dropping at any second— A sword of Damocles for each and every person that yo...

“Choose joy,” Oft-repeated advice that, on the surface, makes sense, Dig a little deeper, and it can be very unhealthy, Dig down to the depths and it can be beautiful, “Choose joy,” It does not mean To suppress negative emotions, To cut off the parts of yourself that feel pain, Isolating them behind a wall even as Fortunato, left to console himself only with his wine while he died a slow and painful death in darkness and isolation, was walled away from the world by one who could not stand him, To pretend that everything is perfectly fine when your mind, body, and spirit are screaming at you That you are in a place that requires knowing sadness, loss, anger, grief In short, choosing joy does not mean to choose not to feel pain, It does not mean choosing to ignore the facets of Yahweh that can only be found in the depths of destruction, It is so much more It is recognizing Yahweh in the darkness as much as the light, It is enduring the manifestatio...