GRIEF.

If you are reading this you have hopefully just learned about the Jan and Jeffrey Thompson Foundation. Please click and scroll around our website, learn more about our mission, and feel free to share with others!

My first blog post could have been about a lot of topics surrounding Jan, cystic fibrosis, organ donation and/or our lovely pups. However this foundation was born out of GRIEF. Therefore grief is what we shall explore.

There isn’t a blog post long enough for grief and how it affects those differently. How “how” you lose someone also affects your process and how everything you read about grief is correct, everything you have heard about it is correct, and also everything you have seen about grief is also wrong. In other words it’s a crazy beast.

So what can I tell you about my grief and what I have learned….

• It will be the one thing that cripples you. No matter how strong you have been your whole life and/or thought you were. No matter how “ready” you thought you were. Grief will laugh. You will become the weakest side of yourself you have ever seen.
• The person you were before grief will not be the person you were after. You will need to let go of the old you. He/She/They is not there anymore.
• You will lose people over this. Somehow, some way, someone will abandon you. Why? Reference the top two bullet points for your answer.
• You will go through the motions for a while. You won’t remember things and time seems to stand still. It’s as if everything around you is a movie and not reality.
• Your ability to commit or plan anything beyond the day you are in is nonexistent.
• Your darkest moments you will hold for when you are by yourself, where no one can see.

But you know what….you will make it. I promise.

Grief has done all the above for me, but it also has shown me love, laughs, strength and beauty, signs from Jan, and allowed me to start a kick ass foundation. I will always miss Jan and grief will always define me, but I am also a better person for knowing Jan and being loved by her. If you told me over six years ago that would result in where I am now; I still would have signed up over and over. So feel free to ride with us on this crazy and fun journey of a foundation. I mean after all Jan would have! Just make sure you are always living the #betheJan