When grief arrives, it comes in selfish. It blinds us, disabling us to look past our own pain to see the needs or fears of another. We truly become self-absorbed. What’s wrong with this method of coping is that the concerns of those who love us can be misconstrued, thus received as criticism or rejection. And perhaps there is a bit of negativity, or a lot, my point is that grievers tend to project their needs onto others disregarding any attempt to stop and ask themselves, “what’s my crap on the sidewalk?”

Recently one of Zane’s friends broke up with his girlfriend. We are all sad about this but have seen it coming for a long time and after the pain subsides, it will be best for both. He shared with me a text his girlfriend sent him of how his actions had impacted her. He was distraught to think that he had caused someone he loved at one time to feel the way she did. He did not want to be responsible for that. Of course not, crap on the sidewalk is painfully ugly. But if we want to become better, we must clean it up.  And therein lies multiple problems.

Nobody wants to claim crap. It is difficult to admit you put crap on the sidewalk by a wrong action or a failing. It is significantly easier to ignore it or make excuses for it, or my favorite, pretending someone else put it there. The first step is to claim it, “this is my crap!”

The second problem is the hard work it requires to clean up crap. It’s messy, it stinks, it is all the ugly. Crap isn’t the glitter of our personalities; it’s the raw expressed emotions, the childhood traumas, the unlearned lessons needed to grow. Life presents personal trials, and the crappy ones, until we face them head on, never go away.

Furthermore, to clean up your crap, you can lean on others for support, but they can’t clean it. A lot of people wish to have someone else clean their crap. Can’t be done; your crap is your crap. It’s an individual thing and it requires strength, bravery and endurance to face it and clean it. That’s the next problem.

Often, we can’t see that we carry within us all that is needed to clean up our crap. Instead, we choose to wallow in the labels we or others give us.  We get stuck in self-pity when we should be focused on the desire to change. This confused thinking results in decisions that usually brings more crap. The cycle thickens and continues. We must stop the negative thinking that clouds our vision to see the truth.  We can’t resolve what we refuse to see. 

So, what’s the crap on your sidewalk? Because we all have some. Figure out whose crap it is. Ask those you trust to point it out. Be open to hearing about it; it’s just crap. It isn’t the entirety of you, so keep offering positive affirmations to yourself and to others that you’ve got this mess. Clean up your own crap, and for God’s sake, don’t try to clean up someone else’s crap. That defeats their whole soul lesson, causing that same crap to return.  In bigger piles that we are all going to step in.