Saturday marked the two year anniversary of our sisters passing. It was a traumatic experience for all of us and completely unexpected. There is something different about grief when you experience a kind of sudden trauma like what we went through that day. Its a feeling too many people know all to well, but a feeling so many people will never understand. We have all grieved in different ways but on the anniversary of her death we all agreed that it was important to spend time as a family with the exception of my younger brother who connects to himself more in times of solace and meditation. I'm the opposite. I have to be around people, which is why for the past two years I've forced this family beach outing on everyone. I couldn't be alone in my thoughts, I needed the laughter of Rachel's children, I needed to hold my husbands hand, I needed to see my mom and sisters face so I knew they were okay. Its truly amazing how different we are all wired and the past two years have taught me that in a way thats hard to even put into words.

I'm currently reading Option B by Sheryl Sandburg and Adam Grant. I'm only a few chapters in but something I read couldn't be more true and couldn't have resonated with me more.

"A psychiatrist friend explained to me that humans are evolutionarily wired for both connection and grief: we naturally have too to recover from loss and trauma. That helped me believe that I could get through this. If we had evolved to handle suffering, the deep grief would not kill me. I thought about how humans had faced love and loss for centuries, and I felt connected to something much larger than myself-connected to a universal human experience."

Can I say anymore? Connected to the human condition. The past two years I have found myself more connected to myself than ever before, and it hasn't been pretty. But in the darkest corners I've found myself in, I kept reminding myself...I'm supposed to feel this, this is okay. For me, my sisters death was also juxtaposed with what was one of the happiest times of my life, marrying Chad. Her death was two months before our wedding and having to play tug-o-war between those two emotions for the months leading up to our wedding and on our wedding day was intense. Thats the only way I can describe it, intense.

Grief is a journey my friends, so hang on tight, grab the hand of everyone who extends it and go for the ride. Option A is gone, it's time to figure out how to navigate Option B.

We love and miss you Meg, over and over you are the teacher of my soul.