Grief is a journey, NOT a destination that brings an ending. In the ongoing healing process we can become more compassionate and real individuals. Hopefully, we encounter others who can listen, and resources that serve as catalysts in our healing.

The metaphor of being lost and wandering in a range of unfamiliar mountains of emotion during the grief process often helps individuals to see — and feel — the need to get help from effective grief counselors and/or grief support groups.

Life sometimes suddenly transports us to new growing ground — a seed sprouts and soon has blossoms, a chick leaves an egg, a cocoon releases a butterfly. Grief can be a growth experience.

Death, and even illness, force us to look at and reframe what we consider to be life, and what is important in life.

One day, I realized that what I was unknowingly holding on to was NOT my loved ones but the pain which had replaced them in my life. Once that realization hit me, it was relatively easy to let go of the pain and refocus on the love, memories and joy they brought into my life. This allowed me to say good-bye and let those I love re-enter my life in some beautiful and deeply connected new ways.

Grief is a time of rebuilding identity and is experienced not only when death occurs, but as and after one leaves a house that has been a home or a relationship or a job, or when children leave home for kindergarten or college (empty nest), when a beloved pet dies. Grief can occur with a marriage, as well as during and after divorce, financial loss or ruin or with the loss of a home.

We must honor and work through our grief or it will not let us rest.

Unprocessed grief keeps us from going forward in life and blocks our joy in living.

Grief is a healing process which connects the present with the past and can eventually offer joy and new meaning in one's life.

It took me a long time to realize that I will always have my children, my mother and others I have loved who have died; they never leave my heart. There are still pain-filled moments, yet now they do not last so long. Acceptance is a choice and is necessary for survival and going on in a positive way.

There is a deep bond — which often needs no words — with others who have had loved ones die.

One of the privileges of grief is to be able to help others who are struggling. Those just starting the journey need to know that they too can survive the grief process. Connecting with someone who had survived the climb gave me the gift of hope. There is a gentle joy in passing this gift of hope to others.

Part of my motivation in global issues is related to my own experience of having two of our three children die. In my international travel to promote, justice, health, dignity and improved agriculture, I've met bereaved parents in remote villages at the top of the Bolivian Andes and in the African bush and the deepest jungles of Indonesia; their grief is no less than mine. There is an instant bond that is deeply meaningful — see the piece "Bonded," page 47 in Grief: Climb Toward Understanding.

There is always risk in raising children. Even if I knew the outcome — the death of two of our three children — I would take the risk of having children again.

It is helpful to talk with, or read the story of, someone who has walked this difficult road of grief and has reconnected with life and hope.

Each of us knows people who have not grieved fully and have paid for it with ill health and other reactions. Anger and self-produced guilt often combine with attachment to the pain of loss. This can create enormous personal tragedy and may result in a lifelong lack of full productivity and peace, if not illness.