A life with a progressive disease or chronic illness is a life full of grief… and a very particular kind of continual grief. Grief of any kind is a difficult painful process, but it required for all of us to move through in life to be able to re-open ourselves to our future lives and carry on released from the burden of the pain of grief.
However, with most grief that a person will experience in life there is a single causative finite event; a loved one dies, a lover leaves us, a beloved pet dies, we are fired from a job we loved or our business fails. All these situations while hard, painful, grief-causing, there is a beginning, a middle and an end.
Life and grief with chronic illness does not follow the same standard trajectory however, there can often be very rapid and continual losses one right after another after another for years on end leaving a person facing an ongoing long-term continual grief.
Personally in the past only 10 years due to my progressive illness I have lost my career, lost my home, lost my home business, lost my ability to go to the gym, ride my bike, roller-blade, hike, go camping, lost my ability to go on vacations, out to dinner/lunch, lost my ability to drive, lost my ability to go out and socialize with friends, lost my ability to provide basic daily care for myself, I am now home-bound and require a daily support-person to get by in life.
This ongoing long-standing grief will lead to a continual battle against depression. It is grief like no other. The only choice a person in this situation has is to learn how to balance life to live through ongoing grief, and not be consumed by it. It takes time and practice to achieve, but with enough determination and practice on cultivating a deep gratitude for each day and each moment and a fierce spirit of mindfulness it can be done.
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