If I touch a hot stove my hand jerks away almost before my mind registers the searing pain. It’s reflex. Our bodies were designed to react to and protect us from things that cause pain.
Run away. Don’t go back. Set up barricades and warning signs so that others can be protected.
Most of the time, this reaction serves us well.
But sometimes those reflexes keep us from healing.
Anyone who’s had major surgery knows that when the nurses come in the next morning saying, “We’re going to get you out of bed today!”, the last thing you want to do is swing your legs over and stand up. It HURTS!
We want to avoid what hurts, not embrace it.
So it’s no surprise that when we suffer deep emotional wounds, our first response is to try to run away or bury them or ignore them. The last thing we want to do is face them.
But if I am to heal, I have to face them. I have to take hold of each place where the dagger of grief and sorrow and regret and anger has pierced my heart and examine it closely. I have to decide what to do with it, how to integrate it into my life after loss.
Grief is work! That is one of the reasons grievers need solitude as well as companionship on this journey. And that is why grief can’t be hurried along. It takes a great deal of time to do the work grief requires.
If instead of facing our pain, we try to run away or distract ourselves or numb ourselves with alcohol, food or drugs, we only prolong the process. Grief will not be ignored forever.
We must FEEL what we need to feel.
Then we must DEAL with those feelings-it might mean seeking a professional counselor or a trusted friend. Online or in-person grief support groups are a wonderful resource. Journaling can help too. But we have got to acknowledge and work through these feelings.
And then we can begin to HEAL Hearts that have embraced and made some sense of grief can begin to beat again. They can begin to love again and feel joy again. They can learn to carry both sorrow and happiness-to remember and honor the missing child while also honoring and loving family and friends still here.
It’s not a “once and done” exercise.
I have repeated these steps over and over in the soon to be [nine] years since Dominic ran ahead to heaven. New feelings show up at the door of my heart and I have to choose to feel them, to search for what they mean and why they are here and then allow them to be woven into the fabric of who I am NOW-this side of child loss.
It takes courage and stamina and determination, but it is the only way forward.
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thelifeididntchoose 
Its been 5 years sence i lost my son in a war in Afghanistan. I took medications to help me but it was not until I stop these meds and faced it head on and then I began to heal. I will never get over it but I am learning to live with it.
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For some reason, this post reminded me of these quotes from “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis….
“For in grief nothing ‘stays put’. One keeps emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often – will it be for always? – how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say ‘I never realized my loss till this moment’?”
—From “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis
“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape. As I’ve already noted, not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn’t a circular trench. But it isn’t. There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn’t repeat.”
—From “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis
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LOL! I was writing on ‘Healing’ at the same time you were. Apparently, God wanted that message out there. (((HUGS))) God bless you, Melanie.
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That’s how it is sometimes Jude! Not surprising that we on the same journey would hear the same message in our hearts. I’m thankful for everyone who is willing to be open and vulnerable-it encourages others. ❤
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Reblogged this on My Journey Through and commented:
I wish I had written this! It says what I wish I were far enough along in this grief journey to know how to say. Thank you, Melanie, for sharing your wisdom on life after child loss.
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I’m thankful it speaks courage to your heart, dear one. It has taken almost two years of sharing and nearly 3 1/2 years of travel in this Valley to find my voice on so many aspects of this journey. You will find yours. God is faithful and as He leads you, He will give you the word. ❤
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