The topic of podcasts came up, and I wondered why I didn’t listen to them. I thought I might try to shake it up this year and listen to podcasts as well as read. My first podcast came to me on a web search and as they say, “first time is a charm”. It was a good one.

The podcast was from Grief Out Loud where John Onwuchekwa, a Pastor, author, team builder and storyteller communicated his thoughts of why grief is not a journey.

In 2015, his brother Sam passed suddenly bringing grief as a new subject into his forum of topics he likes to share.  John starts the interview about the initial feelings loss brings and how that stays with us.  How 11 years later, he still finds himself asking, “Is he really gone?  In the early days, you forget. Hearing it throws your body into exhaustion, tearing your world apart… then, in the morning there are a couple of seconds before you remember.”  The intensity of this goes away but it always will feel surreal.

There are parts of our self that die with the loss of someone close. We aren’t sure what those parts are, and we never know if you are going to get those things back. He speaks of what changed in him with his brother’s death.  He shares he is no longer proficient at returning messages.  Before Sam’s death, the opinion that he was responsible, goal orientated and focused on the outcome was important to him. Grief changed him to be more intrinsic and less worried about such things, to be more focused on the bigger picture.

He is much less an optimist. “Life is a sort of lottery with no guarantees.” He revaluated family and his role in his relationships and how he could be better. All aspects of grief that each of us face. What was intriguing is John’s disagreement of the idea grief is an individual linear journey that we travel. His alternative is appealing.

John believes that grief is a language we become fluent in.  Through language one can support their loneliness. “People are not afraid of grief.  They are afraid to be alone in their grief.” Language is about finding the right words when there are none.

John speaks about the types of languages of grief. For example, grief is body language. We cry. We scream. And forever, our body remembers the day we lost our loved one, the physical symbols related to their death, and when we do, our bodies may flinch. This is our body talking to us.  Grief is also a written language. When you write, you must remember your story. It forces you to linger in the memories. “Grief is a language and if we don’t learn it, we can’t heal.”

The ideal that grief is a language to which we are trying to become proficient in gives a scholastic slant to dealing with grief, rather than the antidote ‘pack your suitcase, you are going on a trip’. I think I might combine the two. Grief has launched me on an eternal journey to which I will come across many strange lands and meet many wonderful people and together we will learn to speak a language only understood by those who carry loss.  

To hear this podcast, click: Why Grief Isn’t A Journey (And What It Is Instead) – John Onwuchekwa