From Sorrow to Strength: A father’s Story of Loss

AUTHOR: From Sorrow to Strength is a culmination of many years of searching for answers to the many questions that evolve from the loss of a loved one. It is one parent’s voyage through a trail of hardships that repeatedly brought him to his knees while desperately searching for answers. It is designed to show that in our darkest hour, a tiny speck of light will often penetrate the abyss. Recovery from a sudden passing is not time-sensitive and depends greatly on many personal factors that make up our mortal being. The murky survival route is composed of countless dips, turns, and bumps making our path burdensome and challenging. However, the author, having encountered all of those, found strength from a simple act of abandonment of his rather selfish search for explanations.

Answers are often found in actions of oneself and others, more than in mere words that may be missed during periods of deep remorse. The constant fog one experiences during periods of mourning lifts only slowly in a spiral and the real meaning is only understood after a meeting, an act, or kind words. Collectively, these occurrences begin to create a path to strength and a newly found purpose in one’s life. When reflected upon, it much resembles the different stages of the metamorphosis of a butterfly with each stage looking very different and serving a different purpose. When tragedy strikes, we become the egg or the alpha in our journey to survival. Given time and support from many quarters, we evolve to a stage where we become beautiful, appreciated, and productive beings that others begin to notice. How quickly we progress through the stages is often determined by us and a variety of occurrences in our lives.