Julie Schlegel

The Nature of Change - How the Natural World Coached Me Through Loss and Grief Julie Schlegel

This collection of writes from the author's grief journal reads as a series of short essays, comparing the grief process to the ever-changing face of nature - sometimes predictable but always evolving toward another day and another season. Through those days and seasons, this suicide survivor relates the changes she sees in nature to those in her own life and feelings. One entry, for example, describes not just the beginning and end of a snowstorm but how the flying snow changes through the storm's duration and, similarly, how her feelings of grief, guilt, and aloneness fly about, then seem to calm, then swirl up again. By journaling her observations and the metaphors they inspired of her own experience, she allows herself to relate to the power and inevitability of change - and make peace with not only her loss but also her survival.