Reply To: Dealing with Grief After Forsaking Religion

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I totally hear you Michelle! Yep. I never used the word church mouse to describe myself…but…I was a missionary. I was a teacher and a leader, in both English and Spanish. I was very devoted to my faith for YEARS. I stayed with a man for a long time because I thought, “God hates divorce.” I understand the mourning of lost time…

As far as lost relatives….mourning that you will not see them again…

There is another way to look at it. It is to say that each and every person that you love and have lost has added something of value that is worth remembering to YOUR life. And like the video above says, they DO return to the stars. We are made of star dust and we return to the stars. You ever seen the Lion King? LOL….(I have a kid) there is a scene when they are looking at the stars. It’s like ancestors looking down on you. It’s OK to feel that comfort, but the REAL legacy is in the person that YOU have become because of them. They do live in your heart. There are only a few people who I consider reside in my heart like that. I carry a piece of them with me always, and the strength and knowledge that they have imparted on me, I in turn impart onto my son. Onto friends. Onto conversations like this one. There are pieces of wisdom that I’m sharing with you know that other people shared with me at one time, so they have given something to me that I can turn around and give to someone else. That is power. That is beautiful. And it’s more profound than the Christian version of heaven. In the sense that wisdom and love passed on, that allows the cycle of the Universe to continue, which does mean that those who you have loved and lost live forever, just not in the literal sense you always thought, but in a more beautiful sense….Just look at the stars tonight and you’ll see….