Enjoy this article on Grief to Gratitude: Embracing the Inner Pathway to Healing and Peace, written by Steven Ferrara. This book isn’t just about loss—it’s about awakening. It’s about finding a new way to live and to love beyond the limits of form.
From Grief to Gratitude
What if we could look at death with curiosity instead of fear? What if we could look at death from their side instead of ours? What if we could have the mindset of What can be instead of What could have been after someone dies? What if we could have a grateful heart for the experience?
My son Christopher died in a car accident when he was 23. He was my closest friend, he was our oldest child, he was in business with me, and he was everything my wife and I could have asked for in a son, or that his 2 sisters could ask for in a brother. His death was the absolute most agonizing and painful experience of my life. Emotionally, mentally, and physically the most intense suffering I have ever felt.
The permanence of death is the hardest part to accept as there is nothing you can do about it and nothing can change that at the human level. Through the intense grieving, which included extreme anger at God and the Universe, I knew that I had to find a better way of dealing with his death if I were to ever be able to move forward in a healthy way for myself and my family.
I began to read books voraciously about life and death, near death experiences, and mostly spiritually oriented books like A Course in Miracles, and books by David Hawkins, Eckhart Tolle, and Michael Singer, among other great current spiritual authors. I was searching for answers that would help relieve my suffering. I realized that asking why has no answer and can only lead to more suffering and so began to ask how I could look at this unimaginable experience differently.
The Therapy of Journaling
Before Chris’s death, I had journaled infrequently but was now finding that daily journaling became a necessary therapy, an outlet for expressing, and it enabled me to feel a connection to my son. At first, I expressed only raw emotions. That grew into the feeling that this was a new way of communicating with Chris, like learning a new language. Eventually, I learned to allow a stream of consciousness to flow and just follow it in my writing. This is where, in now looking back for the first time after many years of journaling, that I have recognized the clear lessons I have become aware of through death that has taught me how to live a greater more aware life.
One day in my meditation and journaling, a new understanding came to me that seemed so simple but was a huge step into another way of seeing this otherwise torturous time in my life. That simple “light” that came on was What if I look at this from Chris’s side of the experience. As a loving father, I would always support Chris in his pursuits and experiences while he was alive, what if I could see this experience as his ongoing journey?
This seemingly small mindset change opened a new dimension for me to explore. It took the focus away from me and my feelings that were centered on myself and led me to a higher awareness. That awareness included me asking “What can be” in our “new” relationship moving forward as opposed to “What could have been?” This level of understanding opened me to see that Chris and I’s relationship is beyond the human experience. That there is a spiritual level of relationship that could continue and grow. I began to relate to Christopher as my Spiritual Partner in addition to my son, which added even more to our ongoing relationship, where I could continue to share my love with him.
Feeling of Sadness
These new awakenings were giving me an entirely new way to reframe and view my son’s death. Missing him and feeling sad will continue because we do not have the human interactions that are so enjoyable. Hugging him, having great conversations over a cup of coffee, playing golf with him, being in business with him, and all the many family events that we loved and enjoyed together could not occur. But I also realized that sadness will come and sadness will go. I learned to give sadness the permission to pass through, not to let it turn into more than a feeling, and I knew that the feeling of sadness would not kill me. It did not feel good, but when observed and not engaged with, not allowed to be spun into a story, and not expressed to anyone other than my journal, it would evaporate. This could happen within a short period of time or sometimes could last for longer. But I learned that sadness, like many feelings, is overrated, and meant to be felt, and then allowed to be let go.
I was recognizing that I could feel feelings in my body while not allowing them to move into my head. In other words, I could watch the feelings of sadness or missing Chris but not engage with them with my thinking mind. My thinking portion of mind would spin these feelings into stories like, he and I will never experience him getting married, having children, or growing successful in his career. These stories lead nowhere except feeling sorry for myself and that road only created more suffering. The thought-based mind has no answers for this level of unimaginable experience, and so tends to create drama in our lives, and I needed to find other tools.
I realized that these other tools were also within me, but I had to choose to be willing to allow myself the space necessary to discover them. Meditation, journaling, spending time with Nature, and quiet times where I could allow the chatter in my head to cool down was critical. Reading spiritual books and having conversations with people with higher understanding or higher consciousness was also imperative for me. I was fortunate to find these people in A Course in Miracles study groups, Way of Mastery study groups, and other type spiritually oriented retreats that were so helpful.
Death is the one thing that is a guarantee to occur, and we all have in common. If we are born, we are going to die. Birth and death occur, but Life is eternal. It was critical that I distinguished that Life is not the opposite of death as that gave me the vision to begin to be open to a larger context of understanding. I began to ask many questions in my journal about this eternal life and what it really means. And I found that imbedded in the questions are answers and insights.
In summary, the traditional way that our society deals with death is more centered on self then it is on truly supporting our departed loved one’s journey. But starting from the premise that we live in a Universe that does not make mistakes, it has been evolving for 13.4 billion years, that the planets and the Sun and all of nature is perfect, then we as humans are part of this perfect Universe. Maybe, our human journey, whether it is 23 years or 100 years, represents the exact trajectory that this journey needed to be, and it is also perfect. And, if we accept that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, then the journey continues, and we can continue to support, and have an ongoing spiritual relationship with our departed loved ones.
My hope is that my experience can help others move through the pain of the death of a loved one in a healthy and more awakened way.
…Read the book Grief to Gratitude: Embracing the Inner Pathway to Healing and Peace by Steven Ferrara.
RSVP for his upcoming author event on January 15, 2026. Hosted by Steven Ferrara, this special online gathering will allow readers to discuss the book and share their experiences.
