Grief has many lessons. One of them is the opportunity to re-create ourselves from scratch because it has the power to take what we are, what we thought we were meant to be, to a far-away place. A place that we felt we would never be able to go.

We are stuck with a new reality, a reality that we don’t like.

When I lost my son, for a while I fought that reality. I fought the dark place where my identity, my plans that would never be fulfilled, and all my dreams had been taken away from me. I hated to hate my new reality. I wanted the old one back.

Grief has a cruel way to teach us the meaning of change and control.

We cannot force death to not be death. We cannot force grieve to not be painful. We cannot force change to not be part of life. We cannot control anyone’s journey.

I reached a point where I was tired of the fight. My life had already changed, I was already the mother who “lost a child”, my world was already dark and it was nothing I could do to change the fact that my son’s physical body was gone; I could never kiss or hug him again.

Out of my willingness to heal, I thought: what if I can re-create myself, my inner world, my reality? What do I have to lose? What else can be taken away from me? I was sure there was no darker place than the one I was already immersed in.

I began to understand the meaning of surrender, which is not the same as giving up. To the contrary; by surrender we empower ourselves to create our inner world despite what the outer world may seem. Like magic I started to create a new reality out of the one that I hated so much. I was able to see with clarity how struggle and pain are the inner reflection of the need to control the external world, and how peace, joy and happiness are the inner indications of surrender to what is.

We can spend all our energy focusing and fighting our believe of how life is supposed to be and it isn’t. We can ride the wave of pain over and over again for years after years.

Or, we can focus our energy on re-creating a new inner world, challenging our belief system, allowing ourselves to be out of our comfort zone. We can begin to catch new waves of unconditional happiness, joy, and peace.

The choice is always ours.