08/30/2026
💭 Do you take the time to grieve your losses?
Most of us don't — not because we don't care, but because no one taught us how.
Today is National Grief Awareness Day, founded in 2014 by Angie Cartwright, who lost her sister, husband, and mother and turned her pain into a mission to end the stigma around grieving. Her warning stays with me: "silent grief can be deadly grief."
Grief is the internal meaning we give to loss — the fear, loneliness, yearning, and emptiness we carry inside.
While grief touches every life, some lives carry more than their share. Loss is woven through military life: frequent moves, friends left behind at every duty station, battle buddies lost in war. 🎖️
Unprocessed, these losses can become what VA hospice nurse Deborah Grassman calls a "Soul Injury" — a wound of loss without mourning, guilt without forgiveness. She identified it while caring for more than 10,000 dying veterans, many still carrying unmourned losses from decades earlier.
Don't wait decades. Name your losses. Mourn them. 💙
✅ Learn more at opuspeace.org.
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