Culture

From the time we are born, we are welcomed into one culture or another.  We adapt and learn the language of that which we are a part of.  We belong to a culture of family and gender, school and fraternities, and for some of us parenthood.  At some point in life, we all have to learn the culture of loss.  Many of us have the burden of losing children, parents, family and friends we hold dear.  For others, we lose part of our dreams for the future to diagnosis we never imagined could happen to us or someone we loved.  When we become ingrained in this unfamiliar culture of loss, we must learn a new way of surviving, because the old way of doing things suddenly makes no sense.  We become very versed in grief, and sadly, the grief we know isn't on a continuum.  It is unpredictable and changes on a whim, one small misstep and we begin the process of healing all over again.  By the sweet grace of God, eventually we begin to cope with our new life.  The culture we now belong to requires that we face most days with strength and courage we never knew existed within us.  At that moment we decide to keep living, we become part of a culture of survivors.