Grief knocks you to your knees and you're left knowing your life will never be the same.

Losing someone you love is hard. But when the dust settles and the pain starts to fade, grief can surprise you in stark and subtle ways. A few bars of a tune, a faint hint of perfume, a brief glimpse of a stranger in a crowd can bring your loss crashing in.

But there are also lessons we can learn from grief. It's not all pain. It can also bring appreciation: for the love you had, for the people who support you, for the life you still have ahead of you.

And as you pick yourself up, made subtly stronger by grief, you find more clarity of purpose, more appreciation for others, and more desire to live your life fully.

You become a grief warrior.

That's what Dr. Marianne Bette calls herself. A grief warrior. She is no stranger to grief and the transformation it brings. Let her teach you how to embrace life again using her personal experiences with grief as well as those from others she has met during her forty years practicing family medicine.

You can live with a grieving heart.

Message from the author: Grief has given me a reverence for life and love that I did not have before. I hope by sharing these stories, you'll see that there's no one right answer to how you should grieve. Living with a grieving heart does get easier. Those of us who have survived similar despair have discovered this by continuing to live. Don't rush. Take your time. Grieving is a process that unfolds on its own timeline.