Ten years ago, I began a journey that took me to places across oceans and continents, most places hidden from notoriety, at the end of dirt roads, for one simple reason: to bring awareness to the presence of unresolved grief deep inside men, women, and children experiencing traumatic losses of people and things dear to them.
My recently published book, “I Am Somebody, Telling Your Story Matters,” chronicles that amazing journey and how a simple Memory Book (journal) began to help children who grieve make their own journey through the grief process and discover resiliency and hope to live life by telling their stories.
One of the most common responses by readers of “I Am Somebody” reinforces the common held belief by those who specialize in loss and grief: everyone is grieving something because life is filled with loss, great and small. Whether we are orphaned, a recent amputee, a student denied entry to the college of their dreams, an entrepreneur experiencing failure, or a family facing the death of a child, grief accompanies all loss. While symptoms are unique to individuals, the grief response to loss is a universal internal response among all of us. What I am told by readers is, “I never realized I was still grieving, or I never realized I grieved over that.”
You may have thought “I Am Somebody” is simply about orphaned children in Africa or India, but it really is about all of us.