Losing Leads to Gain
Throughout the course of our lives, it’s unavoidable that we’ll experience loss. Losing a loved one to death, a favorite belonging, a long time friendship… They all have different ways of affecting us. We can even feel like we’ve lost ourselves somewhere along the way; certainly many of us have experienced this, including our Shine founder, Heather. The path to once again finding ourselves, our peace of mind or even retracing our steps to find something that has been misplaced is never linear. Putting in the effort to work through these and make sense of what is now gone, is worth it in the end.
A member of our Shine Tribe recently lost something very special to her and in the process of coping with it, she experienced finding the grace of understanding that with loss, we also have gain. She recently wrote this story to depict how she turned a familiar feeling of loss into joy and the feeling of having gained something -- a new perspective.
“I was playing with a little boy in the grass, showing him how to whistle with a single strand in-between your thumbs and I had to take off my thumb ring to make the trick whistle. Somewhere in the next 5 minutes, the ring didn’t make it back on my thumb. It wasn’t until later that evening I realized it was gone.
For context, I’ve been wearing this thumb ring on my left hand for 10+ years, so long that it even changed the shape of my thumb. When I realized I misplaced it, I felt a rush of emotions of losing something so special to me.
I’ve experienced a lot of loss & grief in my life. Growing up, I had a best friend named Erin who suddenly died from a brain aneurysm. Gone too soon when we were 18 yrs young, with so much life ahead of us. Every year around Halloween, she is glued to my thoughts. She LOVED Halloween and for years we would dress up & spend this holiday together in every changing phase —from trick or treating to silly costumes to sexy costumes, we did everything in sync. Then I lost her and our traditions together couldn’t live on… and those types of feelings ACHE within you.
Coping with how this ring has been in my eye sight for so long & how much I’m going to miss it, I also lean into the appreciation of what it has meant to me all this time. Out of loss, I’ve gained. Similarly, when Erin died I found a stray cat that would be my best friend for my college years and most recently my grandmother Mary passed away and I inherited her sweet kitty. A very bittersweet balance of losing and gaining.
The story of losing my ring may sound unrelated or corny but to me, losing this ring… is so symbolic. This ring is featured in so many of my company’s marketing materials and is surely in any picture with my left hand in it and so on. As crazy as it sounds, I feel like losing this ring is representative of a new chapter in my life.
When you lose something special, everything changes. Love, friendship, & memories are more important to me than anything I physically own; and often, I am reminded of that.
Despite losing one of my favorite belongings, that familiar feeling of loss is replaced with the feeling of so much love and gratitude for getting to share and spend time with the people who are so special to me as we approach the holiday season.
I hope one day this ring makes its way back to me but if it never does, there’s more room (on my hand) and in my heart for new beginnings.”
When it comes to Shining Our Brightest and what this community was founded on, when we lose sight of who we are, where we’re going and what our purpose is on this Earth, we have the opportunity to reflect and re-calibrate. Sometimes a loss can allow us to gain and through journaling in my Shine Journal, I’ve been able to find the joy in what loss can mean. No matter what you’re going through, this community is here to support you, lift you up and allow you to consider many perspectives of what might be dimming our Shine and how within, we can dust ourselves off to Shine Brighter in a new light. Light & Love, Shine Tribe.