It’s a nearly universal human tendency to try to fit another’s experience into our own.
Even though I try hard not to, I still often find myself saying things like, “I know just how you feel” or, “This worked for me, it ought to work for you”.
Trouble is, grief is as individual as a fingerprint.
Read the rest here: Grief Is As Individual As A Fingerprint
I first shared this post in 2016 when I deeply resented anyone trying to tell me there would eventually be a “new normal” to this long road of sorrow and missing.
Since then I would say that I can concede there is a kind of “normal” that eventually takes over a life-even a life shattered by loss.
No matter how tempting it might be to climb under the covers and hide away in my room, biding time until it’s MY time, I can’t.
And little by little, the ordinary (and extraordinary) habits, pressures and circumstances of walking in the world require more and more of my attention forcing me to sequester Dominic’s absence to a part (instead of the whole) of my waking existence.
But I will tell you today-over eight years later-that there is STILL absolutely, positively NOTHING “normal” about my beautiful boy being here one moment and gone the next.
❤ Melanie
Something you hear early on in this grief journey is that one day you will find a “new normal”.
I hate that phrase.
Because while I have certainly developed new routines, new ways of dealing with life, new methods for quelling the tears and the longing and the sorrow and the pain-it is NOT normal.
Read the rest here: Nothing “Normal” About It
Do you want to know one of the most repeated questions in grief support groups?
It is, “Am I normal?”
In the midst of great loss,
in the middle of reconstructing a life that includes a giant hole,
while struggling to place one foot in front of the other,
parents who have buried a child are often worried about whether what they feel and how they act is “normal”.
Grieving a child is a complex and life-long process as I wrote about here: Am I Normal?
It hurts my heart every time I hear it or see it written at the end of a long, heartfelt post in a bereaved parents’ group: “Am I normal?”
Because in addition to bearing the weight of child loss so many mothers and fathers wonder if what they are feeling, what they are thinking and what they are doing is within the range of “normal” for those who have buried a son or daughter.
If we didn’t closet the deepest and most difficult aspects of grief and loss hearts wouldn’t have to fret about whether or not their experience was common, expected, typical, ordinary and very, very NORMAL.
❤
I just came home a couple days ago from a weekend retreat for bereaved moms and was reminded again that the range of “normal” in grief-especially child loss-is so very wide.
Still crying after a decade? Absolutely normal.
Trouble getting dinner on the table or remembering your child’s school schedule? Yep. That’s normal.
Read the rest here: Grief-So What’s Normal???
There are lots of social media memes floating around about 2020 being an interminably long series of disaster after disaster.
“If only it would end”, is the hidden hope whispered inside hearts longing for the calendar to turn from one year to the next.
“If only things would get back to normal!”
But there’s no magic in how we humans divide the days or months or years as this big blue marble travels round the sun and through the universe. It’s simply a convenient way to mark time.
And there’s no guarantee that time, by itself, rights anything. There’s no promise in the next sunrise that what’s been broken will be mended.
The rest of the world is learning what bereaved parents have known ever since the awful reality of child loss was laid at the door of their hearts: there’s no way back to “normal” once your world is violently torn from its moorings.
All you can do is assess the damage, pick up whatever pieces may still be viable and try your best to cobble them back together into usable shape.
Some use the term, “new normal”, to describe a state that (most bereaved parents) eventually reach. A way of walking in the world with a profound limp, a wounded heart, a half-smile that hides tears threatening behind tightly closed eyes.
We make adjustments because we have to. The world doesn’t stop and ask permission before continuing on its merry way.
I would not wish this pandemic on a single soul.
I grieve (maybe more than many) over every person lost to Covid19. I cry every time I hear of another lonely elder separated by glass from human hugs and family kisses. I am counting the cost of witnessing traumatic deaths for nurses and doctors who have to hold hands as well as treat illness because visitors are not allowed in the rooms of the dying.
We haven’t begun to assess all the ways this pandemic is changing and will change us-individually and communally.
But if you’re waiting for 2020 to end, for a magic vaccine or for some other relatively instant and far-reaching cure to transform current reality, I think you will be waiting a long time (if not a lifetime).
I think, that like me, you will have to work through your own feelings and fears. You will have to decide what risks you can take.
You will have to figure out who and what in life is non-negotiable and hold onto that with both hands no matter what else happens.
Bereaved parents are good at this because we have to be.
If you are looking for trailblazers through unprecedented tragedy and unfriendly territory, follow them.
They can show you how it’s done. ❤
You’d think that the depths of despair, the breath pressed out of your lungs would stop a brain from wondering if even here, I’m “normal”.
I’m not sure it’s the same need for affirmation junior high girls crave-am I doing/saying/being the things that will guarantee I fit in-but it’s a close cousin.
The human heart longs to know that what it feels is something other hearts feel.
I was desperate for assurance that what I was going through fell well within the range of “normal”.
So let me assure you.
If you wonder if all these crazy emotions are normal in grief, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!”.
Grief is a ball of emotions any one of which may demand more or less of your attention on a given day. It’s not just sadness or missing or sorrow or even pain.
It’s anger, frustration, rage, relief, abandonment, jealousy, rejection, inadequacy, guilt, denial, dismay, apathy, bitterness, longing, anxiety, woe, depression, vindictiveness, despair, confusion, depression, yearning and more.
Just like loving a living child is complex and complicated, loving a child that has run ahead to Heaven is just as complex.
So don’t make your journey harder by worrying that what you’re feeling is outside the range of normal.
It isn’t.
I promise. ❤
“Stuck in grief”-it’s a theme of blog posts, psychology papers and magazine articles. The author usually lists either a variety of “symptoms” or relates anecdotes of people who do truly odd things after a loved one dies. “Complicated grief” is a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis.
But who gets to decide?
What objective criteria can be applied to every situation, every person, every death to determine whether someone is truly stuck in grief?
Read the rest here: Stuck or Unstuck in Grief? Who Gets to Decide?
I just came home a couple days ago from a weekend retreat for bereaved moms and was reminded again that the range of “normal” in grief-especially child loss-is so very wide.
Still crying after a decade? Absolutely normal.
Trouble getting dinner on the table or remembering your child’s school schedule? Yep. That’s normal.
Struggling with crowds, back-peddling on commitments, feeling trapped by phone conversations, shopping when you are least likely to run into someone you know? Perfectly normal.
Our losses ranged from very recent to decades old and all of us admitted our behavior, our feelings, our ability to handle change, nearly every aspect of our lives was impacted by the death of our child.
So if you are wondering if your expression of grief is normal, it is.
Our lives were shattered.
Our hearts were broken.
Picking up the pieces, whatever that looks like, is absolutely, positively normal.
❤
Will today be a good day or a bad day?
Not sure yet.
Mainly because what usually determines THAT is something that happens (or doesn’t happen) at some point after my morning quiet time.
But whether it’s a good day, a bad day or somewhere in between, it is absolutely, completely, utterly NORMAL for my emotions to change as I make my way down the path called “Child Loss”.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/02/11/child-loss-good-days-bad-days-all-part-of-the-journey/
Will today be a good day or a bad day?
Not sure yet.
Mainly because what usually determines THAT is something that happens (or doesn’t happen) at some point after my morning quiet time.
But whether it’s a good day, a bad day or somewhere in between, it is absolutely, completely, utterly NORMAL for my emotions to change as I make my way down the path called “Child Loss”.
As long as I am doing the work grief requires I will continue to have some better days.
But grief still comes in waves in response to triggers or in response to nothing at all and it may be a bad day.
How well did I sleep, rest, eat or exercise? My body affects my emotions in ways I don’t fully understand but absolutely experience.
Stress can bring tears to the surface. Even GOOD stress can do it. Looking forward to things, planning a party, large meal, trip or event is stressful, even if it isn’t sad. All stress weakens my defenses and makes it harder to employ the techniques I’ve mastered for diverting my thoughts or controlling my tears.
Sunshine or rain? I have learned to count the number of recent cloudy days if I wake one morning feeling bluer than normal. I often realize that a week or more has passed since I’ve seen the sun.
Too much interaction or too little interaction with other humans makes a BIG difference. My introvert self loves long afternoons alone, sitting in silence with a book or crochet, quiet walks in the woods and chore-filled days without music blaring. But healthy solitude can turn to withdrawal if I let it and sometimes I realize my sudden sense of overwhelming grief is, in part, due to lack of human company.
The list is endless.
Thankfully, at nearly five years, the better days outnumber the worse ones for me.
But no matter what kind of day it may be, I no longer worry if it’s normal.
Because it’s ALL normal. ❤
thelifeididntchoose 