Grief is in two parts. The first is loss.                                  
The second is the remaking of life.
 - Anne Roiphe

I have always loved graveyards as they have a peaceful atmosphere. This week I dropped off my son at the diving school, just around the corner is the graveyard where my grandparents were buried.

It was a sunny day and I was so surprised that the grave of my grandparents felt so familiar, although since I am back in Belgium, I did not have the chance to go visit. While I cleaned the grave, watered the flowers, I sat there for some time feeling really lonely and content at the same time.

While sitting there, looking at their grave, I felt grief for the loss of two beautiful souls and at the same time I felt so grateful for the time we had together. And I felt the pain and grief over so many things I lost or left behind. I realized that we are just here temporally and I felt a deep sense of gratefulness for all those lovely moments in my life.

"The best thing about memories is making them"

Rather than making new year’s resolutions this year, we tried something different. We, as a family have made a first start to filling our jar of memories.

Since we like to make an effort to adjust again to our new life style in Belgium, I decided to start to collect nice memories of our ‘new’ home country experience. Because I noticed that after the first excitement of returning “home” was over, I started to refer to the nice memories of our life abroad.  

Every day we are collecting new memories for a later day . So while enjoying the ‘present’ moment I also am aware that I am collecting memories for later because precious memories are like an open fire that warms you during the cold winter.

I try to be much more aware of the beautiful and precious present moment while being aware that this moments will be treasured later in life. The jar of memories will help me to remind me that life is what you make of it and we are living in the present while collecting memories to enjoy in the future.

On new year’s eve we all wrote down the nicest, most treasured moments of 2013. These papers were folded and put in our memory jar. At the end of 2014 we will read what we have written and add new memories of 2014.

I will start 2014 as a memory collector!

All the best for 2014!

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new” -Socrates

 Letting go of my expat life and embracing my new life, is not an  easy one. I realise now that it was more easy to move from one place to the next that resettling in my ‘ home country’. In my latest post I describe that my home country as changed and so did I. Coping with this change and with changes in general, is not straight forward, we all deal with change in our own way.  With every transition, be it changing  jobs, changing countries, a part is about letting go of the old, known and the
other part is about embracing change, the new. 

Before we can embrace change we go through several stages.  Understanding our process can help us deal better with change. The Kubler-Ross research team came up with S.A.R.A.H. This model acknowledging that as people meet with change they generally have the following reactions:

1. Shock
2. Anger
3. Resistance
4. Acceptance
5. Healing

Sometimes one change in your life can lead to different changes,  also on the personal level. If you like some guidance in the transition you are going through or you want to make the most out of the changes you are dealing with, feel free to contact us.