The saddest truth in life, is that at some point we will all lose someone we love. It can be a close family member, a partner, a dear friend, colleague or neighbour or worst of all a child.
In the early days you stumble through.
Certain busybodies like to Inform you on how you should grieve or how they grieved. I call these people Moaning Myrtles or Michael’s! You come away from them feeling heavy and yucky….then a few hours later the anger sets in!
How dare they dump their emotions on you at such a vulnerable time or tell you how to grieve.
Grief shaming is very real among those who have lost family members. We all have that person we avoid like the plague as they are like a human black hole, sucking the energy out of everyone around them. I personally find these people have narcissistic tendencies as they have zero compassion or empathy for the bereaved person in front of them, they are simply using them as an energy supply. This is not to be confused with those of us on the neurodivergent spectrum that will tell you about their grief to show how they understand your pain, it’s not to diminish your grief in any way. It’s the ADHA way of an otter giving you their favourite pebble. They share with you, in order to let you see they can handle your pain and fully support you in your grief.
I woke up the day after my Nannie’s funeral and my jaw was in agony. I never realised how stressed out I was over the days leading up to it. The following days afterwards I felt as if I had been hit by a train.
The jaw is where our stress resides, it made sense as I had been clenching it unconsciously. The body always keeps the score.
Grief is messy.
It’s ugly and complicated.
There’s also a lot of politics that goes into Funerals. If you are lucky to have a family that are very close and pull together , you are truly blessed.
In the case of someone who has a long term illness or dementia , you witness the catastrophic fallout and destruction an illness can wreck on a families tight knit bonds.
The trauma of losing someone suddenly without warning can detonate an emotional grenade that many find very hard to come back from.
There is no right way to grieve.
It takes time and you need to give that time some more time. When you lose someone you love, you feel as if you are wearing your skin inside out.
You feel as if everyone is out there living their best life and you are walking around feeling a limb is missing. You have a hole inside you that will never be full again.
You can start to integrate that loss but there’s no such thing as getting ‘over’ grief. It is a lived experience. The loss has to become a part of you and there is pain involved in the assimilation of that loss inside the human body. Then there are days when grief hits you like a bolt out of the blue!
It can be a strong perfume carried to you on the breeze, a photo which unlocks a core memory or song that pops on the radio. You feel their presence acutely.
Please know your loved one gave you that song to help you grieve. They understand your pain. They are completely at peace and are trying to help you integrate their loss so you will be able to spot the signs they send you. There is nothing more heavier then grief and it can render you stone cold to receiving signs from spirit. Think of it like this, we raise our energetic vibrations to connect with spirit , they lower theirs back into this heavy dimension. Grief lowers our vibration further, which is why some people don’t get any signs for several years after a loved ones passing.
I will leave you with this piece I found years ago.
It’s called the shipwreck. It was posted by an old gentleman on the reddit forum and to this day I’ve never found a more well articulated piece on grief.
Be gentle with yourself this month
Love Fiona x
The Shipwreck
Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbours, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.
As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
