Respecting Endings

I've just finished a great self-publishing workshop in Tampa and will be making several small changes over the coming days and weeks to make this site easier to find and the articles more accessible to fellow widows and widowers. What's the point in writing about Grief Recovery Tools if the people who need them most cannot find them? ;-)

The leader of the workshop, Gary Scott, has spent a great deal of time with shamans in Ecuador. He shared yesterday that, at one point, he asked a shaman what the biggest problem is that westerners have. The shaman thought for a moment and then said, "Westerners don't respect endings." Gary then went on to point out the prevalence in the West for products like hair colouring to hide grayness, and deeper body modifications like Botox. And then he said something which for me was very profound:

Ends are really beginnings

Such a different way to look at grief! Even though it has only been a day and a half since Gary said that, I can already feel a deep change in not only the way I look at my own situation, but at all the past endings in my life. It is like I can see clearly now, for the first time, all the new beginnings where before I could only see the endings. I'm still trying to get a handle on the ramifications of such a perspective. I suspect they are only for the better.