"I am sorry to hear you are struggling. I thought you guys had turned a corner." My dad kindly spoke to me over breakfast one day. I had been trying to explain how the holidays have been hard on my husband and I.
"It doesn't quite work like that," I told him. He was quickly aware of that. He only had good intentions, but sometimes words can be so slippery.
I know with all my heart my dad, family and friends all genuinely care about us and our boys, yet even in times of great struggle, it is almost as if you are being asked to strengthen yourself even more.
What I had to explain to my dad and many others is that this grief, it is not simply something that one day you wake up and say, "well that's it. I'm done now. I feel great. I am free to move forward with my life."
One might find that the people around us are uncomfortable with our emotions and our suffering. But we must recognize that this is not personal, for it simply means they are not comfortable in living in their own emotions, therefore they just want to see everything to be fine and "perfect". We are a culture that exists in fear of feeling anything but "perfection". When I can sit with my feelings, any and all of the, without judgment, they lose their control on me and I can move forward. When I fight them or choice to avoid them, they will always find their way back to me. Rarely, do we make time to process them and we wonder why we repeat the same patterns over and over or we turn to the outside world to find our "happiness". We will never find peace until we turn inward.
With the holidays upon us, we have had some very sad moments and some very angry moments as well. They don't last as long and they are less intense but they are still there.
A dear friend of mine who has also experienced great loss in her life explained it so well to me in this way: It's like a large scab, the scab slowly heals but it takes time and attending to. Sometimes the scab will rip off and the pain will be there all over again; a stinging pain that feels unbearable, yet with experience with grief, you start to know that the pain is temporary and the scab will continue to heal with time and care. Self-care. Self-love. The scab will be a scar for a lifetime yet it won't always hold so much intensity.
It has been some time since my last journal entry.
I had to take some time to heal some other areas of my life, yet I still continue to write in one capacity or another as writing truly helps me process my grief. These are some other great books that have really assisted me in my healing.
These ornaments were given to me by a beautiful friend and mentor. They are on our Christmas tree amongst all of our other special memories. We will hang them every year.
“When we face a cataclysmic loss, we may try to remain on the stones above the surface, but the raging currents ultimately wash over us and drag us under. We find ourselves, at last, exactly where we have tried for so long not to be. Ironically, it is within the raging torrents of emotion that we have kept submerged all these years that we can finally begin the work of coming fully into our lives.” Awakening from Grief.
