On September 26th, I had to bury my uncle, and his funeral ignited this idea of grieving in my 20s because I did not know how I was supposed to feel. Though sad, uncomfortable, and angry, I felt everything, but also content because I knew he was content. And so I started thinking about grieving in general. I realized that I had experienced anxiety, depression, and everything in between because I was suffering from what I once was, but I was not working through it.
When we think of grieving, it is often connected to losing someone important or influential in our lives. However, we forget so quickly that you can grieve anything. Your 20’s overall are a decade-long grieving process. Your childhood is behind you, you have most likely graduated from high school, and life is changing more rapidly than ever. It is a lot for anyone to process, but it is okay because grief does not always have to be sad. Feeling nostalgic and reminiscing what once was is okay because if you can not get to where you are going without remembering where you came from.
Again and again, this generation especially is bombarded with catastrophic events that we have never had time to recover from and take care of ourselves because every year, we live through another significant historical event. It is hard to process and work on our grief when we never get a chance to catch our breath. People turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms to get through and end up more hurt than before.
It can be tricky, but as individuals and a generation, we must work through this grief to be better people for our children and ourselves. Doing the work now will diminish the heartache later.