I Grow Anyway: Photographing Symbols
/ Photogrief : Eleanor Haley
This essay is a part of WYG's PhotoGrief project. The goal of the PhotoGrief project is to create a space where people can explore and express their grief through pictures. Learn more about the project here.
by Carole Ross
This is how I feel, surrounded by hardness – the hard things I must face, the hard things I must do.
Perhaps you already knew that grief stacks upon grief. I learned through my GriefShare group that if you don’t properly grieve a loss, the next loss you experience will be even harder. When I lost my husband, I had to go back and grieve all my former losses: my baby daughter, my first marriage, my dad, and my mom.
Since my husband died, I’ve lost my step-daughter and a granddaughter (murdered; left behind a little boy). So when I started to walk into church the other day and saw this little plant, I knew I'd found the perfect representation of my life. All these hard things that have happened will not defeat me. I will survive, and I will thrive.
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