Healing After Loss

MAY 1

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help

create the fact.

—WILLIAM JAMES

At first we are so overwhelmed by loss that we seem
powerless to do anything more than ride along on the tur-
bulent sea of our sorrow and distress. There is no use in
trying to steer this craft. It’s enough just to stay afloat.
But after a while we begin to get some sense that we do,
in fact, have some choice about which way to go.
This is often an unwelcome discovery. It is easier to drift,
and people are so sympathetic to our situation when we are
sad. It is comforting—and less work—to continue to bathe
in that sympathy.
But our life is at a standstill, and we don’t want that to
last forever.
Now we have choices to make, and choice involves risk.
One of the risks open to us is to act from the assumption
that life is, in fact, worth living, and that we can help
ourselves to confirm it. How? The whole theory of behavior
modification is that if we change our behavior, our attitudes
will also change. We can begin to do things again. We can
make an effort to smile. We can reach out to someone else
in need.

I will try acting as though life is worth living, and see what hap-
pens!