fuonlyknew

MY REVIEW

I wept while reading the author’s words in her multigenerational memoir of life and death. Of grief and still foraging on. The world waits for no one. Having felt grief of my own, her words struck deep. The tears flowed. My eyes cleared and the good memories surfaced.

While I found parts of the book painful, as they brought up memories, I thought how much more painful it was for Natasha Pryde Trujillo. And I’m thankful she shared with me.

I never used to read nonfiction or memoirs. When I dipped my toes in the unfamiliar waters, I was glad I did. And I was glad I read And She Was Never The Same Again.

4 STARS

Can you explain the concept of “grief work” and its significance in the healing process?

To me, grief work simply means the opposite of avoiding or distracting from the pain and suffering of loss that is inevitable in life. It doesn’t need to be intensely structured or scheduled work; instead, it is a process. It is multifaceted and takes place both in isolation and with others. It is the idea of being with the grief, of exploring how it has affected your mind, body, and spirit. It is acknowledging the complexity of emotions and experiencing the rollercoaster that has no clear linear path from start to finish. It suspends the notion of an endpoint altogether because people who really engage in meaningful grief work know that it won’t ever go away, but it is something we learn to live with, grow around, and explore how it takes up different spaces in our lives over time. I am not sure that I love the idea of a “healing process” because, again, with some losses, you never return to a fully healed state. To imply so takes away from the whole premise of grief work, which is that it is part of the human experience that lasts our entire lifetimes. We figure out ways to move forward and adapt, but that doesn’t mean we heal completely, and that is okay.