In the last year and a half, I have experienced many things, not the least of which were the death of my beloved grandmother and the end of my first serious relationship. Both were big events that sparked a tremendous change in how I lived with myself and dealt with the world. And today, as I am still going through significant aftershocks, most of which positive, I find myself wondering: is grieving in a good way the most important thing one will ever learn? And this begs another question: why was I not taught this as a child? Why was the transformative nature of grief not taught to me as soon as I was old enough to understand language? Why did I need to wait thirty years to begin to grasp what our culture, our parents, everything around us denies: without healthy grieving, change is ten times as hard.
