Good grief! What I learned from loss | Elaine Mansfield | TEDxChemungRiver

Love and grief are a package deal.

I lost my sister today and searched "grief" in YouTube. I'm thankful I came across your video and wise words. While this wound aches, I already feel myself becoming kinder and more wise.

I just lost my mom last week, she too was my everything Sofia. No one knew me like she did, and no one will. She lived with me these past 4 1/2 yrs. and people say I was " a good daughter." I just gave her back all she gave to me my whole life. I can't imagine this heart feeling whole ever again. Death and this amount of pain makes me question everything in this life. I hope with every breath I have left I see her, my dad and brother one day. May we all find peace~

Grief can be overwhelming to the point of frozen. Especially without a support system. Thank you so much for sharing.

Coincidentally, my mother got the same diagnosis of stage 4 lymphoma after what appeared to be an extended flu. She overcame what her oncologists said was an approx. 5% statistical chance of survival. Amazingly, she achieved remission for over 10 years and died last Oct. Two months after my mother died, my wife got a random kidney infection that, to everyone's incredible shock, turned into kidney failure and then death. She was still a young woman. I went from taking her to the ER with kidney pains and a fever to her death in 35 days. Grieving two deaths (of two people I adored) is a full-time job. When my mother died, I basically lost my father too. My parents were as close as they get and the future does not look good for my poor father. I'm going to a grief-counselor and trying to deal with loss in a healthy way. I'm struggling like hell to do the best I can. Videos, like this one, help me too. Grief is like anything else in life. You learn from others with experience in it. Best wishes to all.

My father died out of nowhere two weeks ago, and I feel an overwhelming amount of guilt that it's partially my fault. He was complaining of chest pains but I didn't take it seriously, was gonna take him to the hospital but on the way he said he felt better so we went back home. Not even an hour later he said his chest pains were back. He drove himself to the hospital alone. I realized too late that I really needed to take it seriously and go with him. I didn't have a phone, so I couldn't call the hospital and didn't have a car so I couldn't drive there. Hours went by an he didn't come back. I messaged my brother to call the hospital. He called me back ten minutes later, a nurse told him that my dad had died of heart failure. He died alone and scared because I didn't go with him, because I didn't realize the severity of it. The grief is so intense every day that sometimes I feel like I could die from it. I have no more family now, and am losing my home and will be homeless soon. I don't possibly know how to begin to cope with the intense grief that I feel.

My twin sister died 19 years ago. I still keep her purse and her eyeglasses. It reassures me that I am carrying on for her.

My husband died a month and a half ago. Just before Thanksgiving and his favorite holiday, Christmas. I carry his cell phone with me. I pay the bill for both our phones. It seemed crazy but now I think maybe it isn't so crazy. Thank you

October seemed like it dragged on and on and on, but now that it's November 1st, I'm in utter disbelief. How has it been a month since two of the biggest blessings of my life were born? How has it been one month since one of the best and worst days of my life happened? If you are a mother, you play the "what if" game often. I constantly think "what if I had just made it another week? Would they have had a chance then?" "What if I had went to the doctor sooner when I started having pains? Could they have done surgery earlier? Would they have had a better chance?" It's a game that will break your heart into a million pieces and drive your mind insane, but it's a game that you can never stop playing. I've come to realize one of the hardest things in life is wanting something you can never have. I would do anything to kiss my boys faces one more time. Anything. Seriously anything. There's a strong and miserable ache inside my heart that I never even knew could exist. Most days I feel like people distant themselves from me because they don't know what to do or say, so they just stay away. I've started to feel as if people don't want to be around be as much because my smile and laugh seem to be almost broken. Even when I manage to achieve one, it seems forced and awkward. I'm sorry to all the ones who have ever lost some one. I'm sorry for not understanding the pain. I'm sorry for dancing around conversations of your loved one, when I now understand that's all you dream to talk about. I'm just really sorry anyone on this earth has to burden this pain. Today not only will I pray for my boys and our family, but I will pray for all of you that have lost someone and know the heartbreak and ache for what will never be. If I could hug everyone single one of you, I would. I would listen to you go on and on about your favorite parts of your loved one. I would sit beside you and hold your hand while you cried and not give out one ounce of pressure to hurry through your breakdown. I would tell you that I truly care about what you've gone through and that I understand you'll never be the same and that it's okay to not be the same. Today I will pray for you in honor of my sweet babies Thatcher and Sebastian. 💙💙 Mommy misses you more and more each day Thatch and Bash. 💙

Gosh I haven't been as strong as you and lost my parents and my sweetest man. my husband to cancer 3 yrs ago and never been the same. your a beautiful soul

Whether grief is good or not I cannot tell. I know for sure that we need it. This is a way our mind prepares for a terrible loss. But I also know how painful it is. And sometimes it's just too painful to handle. It's because grief is like love with nowhere to go.

I did a similar thing after my husband died .He had kept, in a jar, the petals of the first rose I ever gave him. I put that in his coffin along with a fresh rose, the last I'll ever give him. He loved The Golden Girls, so in the coffin went the DVD of the last season of the show. And last, something very personal between the two of us, which I will not divulge here. It helped me to do those things.

My mother was always a melancholical soul. She used to say it was because she lost her mother at the age of 12. It was way to earlier she said. I remember I was very little and I got home from a beautiful summer day and I ran to my mother to tell her everything. She was lying in bed, staring the ceiling. I could tell her she was crying. She told everything was fine. She was just sad. It turn out to be that her boss was dead. She was too good, I remembered her. but she was gone and I couldnt understand. When I was 14, I got a call that my uncle had died. It was asked me to give the news to my mum. I told her, we hugged, we cried. I understood death differently that day. 2 years ago, it was my mother who passed away. I never though i could feel such pain. My mother is everything to me. I dreamt about her every night, for six months. I would dream with her staring at me. Just walking. Sleeping. Just simple tasks. All night. Till this day, every random thing reminds me of her and I think how different it would .have been if she was with me. Last month, another uncle of mine, her brother, died from cancer. And I re-live everything. But this time I knew what was grief. Today, I lost my cousin. He was 18. I'm 20, and I feel like I faced death very differently during my life. I learn beautiful things from grief. But now I'm revolted. Every "new" death, it's not "lived" as a single death or a single grief. Is re-living all the losses we had so far. I'm confused, and it feels good to talk about it, to listen to another people's experiences with grief. And I talk to myself. I writte too. I tell myself how I feel and I accept those feelings. And its the one of the few things that feels good.

My mom died last week after 3 years of living with cancer. We lived toguether and our live was full of rituals, and so her death is. She wanted us (family and friends) to have a party after her death, "drink red wine, eat cheese and chocolates, listen to my music, laugh, tell stories", she said. And so we did. During her "life celebrating party" a close family friend asked me the natural question "how are you doing?" I answered right away this "I'm sad, of course, but I am missing her, not suffering her" I do not know is she can see me from somewhere or if her spirit is out there dancing in some other dimension, but I know one thing, the love we share with people that leave us, does continue living and working his magic through all that small things and rituals that connected us. That is what I call love, little connections that make us belive in something bigger than our existence. I love your speech and I'm truly grateful to have found it. Thank you for sharing.

Elaine, how coincidental it is to find this video after searching for wisdom on the subject. I lost my very best friend and kindred spirit to kidney failure last November. The coincidence here is my friend was Joseph Welch and I believe he was instrumental in making the tedx Chemung seminar a reality. I miss him too, too much for words and I feel as though part of my soul died with him. We were so close and he died before his time. We wanted to grow old in our friendship, but life sometimes has other plans. I do believe that love and grief go hand in hand. It seems like the deeper the love, the more painful the grief. I'm trying to learn something positive from all of this, but my sadness is still so raw. He's been gone nearly ten months and I have just started getting angry. I'm just numb and knowing that I will never have a friendship like the one I lost makes me feel very alone. I am married and have to young adolescent children, but I have been anxious about the possibilities of life changing events taking more of the people I love. I know that is not a productive way to spend my time & I have been trying to figure out how to create something positive out of the absolute gut-wrenching emptiness I have been experiencing since last November. Thank you for your message. ❤️

Grief is my new reality. I lost my mother and my significant other at the same time. Very comforting video thank You 🙏🏼

I lost my Mom to cancer at the same time peak of Corona Virus...unfortunately I was not able to give my beloved Mom a proper funeral. In my heart I told myself it’s ok...when it’s her time to go to Temple later this year to her final resting place . For service family and friends will be there. Temple calls it is closed to public ritual/ceremony will only be privately. All the rituals that should have been has been taken away from me. I am totally devastated.

While he was lost to death, she was lost to life 3:33!! This is very powerful!

 Thank you, Elaine, for sharing your experience so others may enter a healing place with purpose, dignity, grace, and love.

I'm really happy I found this video. January 19th of last year I lost my mom to pancreatic cancer. I was 19, now 20, and she was only 44. Although she had been sick, her death still felt sudden. She was diagnosed just 5 months prior to death, so the loss came before we could even fully process the illness. She was my favorite person in the universe and we shared a bond so special that I can't even begin to convey it through a keyboard. I always want to reach out and speak to her or look through her phone one more time to watch our videos together, or be open to signs from her. However, I have a mental block preventing me, because I'm terrified of opening this part up and facing the deep vulnerability and the painful feeling of fully accepting it. I just recently have started reaching out to talk with her, and finding support online through videos like these. Your words really spoke to me and I can tell I'll be thinking back to them often.