Stronger in the Broken Places: How can grief and loss help us find love, meaning and beauty?

The Self Help Antidote

Ernest Hemmingway said that "the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
This was a deep and at times painful episode. Me and Tiffanee were in good spirits, relatively. We recorded this episode on her birthday. I had no idea. Yeah, some friend I am.

But days before something happened. It was likely the saddest day of Tiffanee’s entire life. The love of her life, her dog coach, died. What’s worse is that it was sudden and unexpected. She went in for a relatively minor surgery and never woke up. I understand how devastatingly painful that experience is. It wasn’t too long ago that we lost our dog Orlando.

If you’re a dog lover and you’ve experienced this personally, you completely get it. If you’re not, this may not make sense to you.

But most of us have had the experience of losing someone we love. It’s an excruciating feeling. Suffering and loss are an unavoidable part of being human. Maybe it’s the fact life IS so fleeting that makes our moments so significant?

I have attended more funerals than I’d have liked to, obviously. One thing that I’ve observed is that in confronting the reality of death, you get clear on what’s meaningful in life. Even in the midst of grief and suffering you can find beauty, love and meaning. We only feel a sense of lose in relation to what we value. If we can be vulnerable to understanding what we miss most, perhaps that can help us to discover what we love most. Because arguably, when facing the reality of life, that’s all that matters.

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