Mental Health Moment 1/1/2025
“Hello Again”
In Narrative Therapy, there is a beautiful concept referred to as, “saying hello again.” Commonly used when one is grieving the death of a loved one, saying hello again allows the griever to recognize the ongoing connection that they have with the person that they have lost. So often, in grief recovery, we therapists encourage our clients to learn how to let go, how to accept the death of the person that has died. But relationships simply do not work that way. We are shaped by the people we are in relationship with. We grow in connection to people and our personalities and lives are developed in part because of how we impact each other. When someone dies, we do not lose everything we gained from that relationship. We do not revert to the person we were before we had been in that relationship. Rather, as we continue to live and grow, our relationship to the deceased moves forward with us and continues to change. The people we lose become a part of our continually evolving world.
When my mother died in 2024, it felt like my time with her was over. I had learned all that I could from her and shared everything that I would ever share with her. But then this reading came into my life about a week after her death and I realized that she was still sharing things with me and I was still sharing her with myself and others. The life lessons I gained from her will take on new meanings as I get older and our relationship will continue. Having said goodbye, now I can say hello again and move into the new stage of our relationship. I will continue to miss her but she is still with me.
