When I was pregnant with Zane, I read every book I could find on how to have a healthy pregnancy, be a good mom, raise a respectful child. Not that reading prepared you for the raw details of motherhood, but no where in those manuals was a chapter on how to grieve if your child is killed. And not that anything can prepare you for the unthinkable. Now, my reading is about how to ‘move through’ grief and I am learning that I have done it all wrong.
My grief is in trouble. I didn’t practice solitude or self-care; I didn’t slow down for a moment. Rather I continued to perform, like a robot trained to do what is expected of me. Daily. Year after year. Having ignored it for so long, it has compounded to the definition of complicated grief. No wonder I feel lost most of the time. According to the experts, my grief has grown into a rebellious teenager because I did not properly care for it in its infancy. Who would have known?
When I had my mastectomy, I was told what to do to heal. I half listened; taking care of the side that had the tumor and ignoring the other side because it didn’t have cancer. I didn’t stop to think that that side too needed healing. After all, that breast was also removed. Two years later, I am still in pain, with keloid scaring and lymphoma that resembles a new but smaller breast on my right. The probability of me fully healing is narrower as I did not take care of myself in the beginning. Trauma needs to be dealt with when it happens, not years later.
The trauma of grief is no different. Giving yourself permission to stop and soothe your pain is a must. Saying no to what you don’t have energy for and yes to what comforts you is a must. Even when it doesn’t align with the expectations of your life before grief. What we tend to forget, is that our life has blown up. It is not, nor will never be, the same again. So why do we expect ourselves to live accordingly to how we did pre-grief?
After Zane was killed, I pushed through like nothing had happened. In shock, yes, but I pretended like it didn’t happen. He was merely away, at school, or on an adventure. He would be back. There was to be no big grief. I had too many people to care for. I had to go back to work. I had a dog to walk and a house to clean. I felt like I had to cater to every need socially and emotionally of my family. It was exhausting and at the end of the day, there was no time or energy to face my own grief. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I screamed alone in the car, I cried every day, every night. Every breath hurt. But I ignored it.
I watched life around me happen like it was a Netflix movie. Only I was part of that movie; playing a character that was unrecognizable as I continued living my life as it was before grief. I ignored my soul screaming out to what I now needed. I put myself into situations that were ok for others, but not for me. Simple things, like dinner out when I wanted to be alone. Late nights because the drinks carried on. This was my life before and I had enjoyed it so what was happening that I was becoming angrier and resentful? I wasn’t letting grief in, nor did I understand that it was to change me.
From this, the biggest lesson, and the one that I share with all my fellow grief warriors, is that your grief is only yours. It is like no other’s grief. And your grief needs to be cared for. It needs space. It needs to be recognized, heard and felt… I take full responsibility for my unawareness. My family ask often, what do I need, how can they help. The truth is I didn’t know. Only now am I starting to know. And the answers scare me because they are so unfamiliar.
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