Grief Dares Us to Love Once More

"Grief dares us to love once more." ~ Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

THIS.  This sort of screamed at me out of this book.  This is what grief does.  It challenges (dares) us to go on, to continue to love while knowing so deeply the pain of loss.  We can choose to stop loving, or we can accept grief's dare.  

But there are days when you are in the throes of grief when loving feels terrifying.  When you are walking a constant tightrope of continuing to live and love and walking through the hot coals of grief.  Sometimes one foot is on both sides.  A soul split.  A heart both filled with love and breaking from loss.  It is an almost constant dichotomy.  

This one sentence screamed to me because this is my daily challenge right now.  It is why my anxiety is at the highest it's been in at least a decade.  It's why my heart skips beats now and then.  It's why sleep is elusive. It's why a bad cold in my kid can ramp me up to extreme levels of concern.  Because I know how fragile life is.  I know how one day can change everything.

And grief dares me to keep going.  To keep believing in the miracle of every day.  To keep loving through grief.  

And some days (and lots of nights), it's terrifyingly hard not to let grief win.  To not let the pain win and take over.  But grief and I have been here before.  I have a love/hate relationship with it.  

And I know that this is the deepest of grief journeys.  Choosing, every day, to love again.  

Setbacks are Part of the Journey

So, I'm just going to say it.  I am not in a great place right now.  I am so, so tired.  I feel like a mom with a newborn.  I haven't had a full night's sleep in over two weeks.  And I've had a few nights of getting less than 2 hours total.  It's a great reminder for me as I'm working with new parents.  Sleep deprivation can make you crazy.  

Sleep deprivation takes down your defenses and allows your head to tell you stories.  Old stories.  Stories that are no longer true.  But without your normal defenses, it's hard to remember that you've moved beyond those stories.  

I'm raw.  I'm at the point where even when I am lying in bed exhausted, instead of sleeping, my brain just spins stories.  Scary, dark stories.  And all my tools, all my knowledge, all my understanding struggle to fight through those stories.  

I have two sick kids.  One who I took to the ER at 3am the day after Christmas.  The Emergency Room!  The last time I took a kid to the ER was when my oldest was 20 months old and he had pneumonia.  That was 15 1/2 years ago.  But there I was, the day after Christmas, at the same emergency room where I took my dad 3 months ago.  And I was there because I had a kid who was struggling to breathe.  All the while, I'm sick too. Not cool, universe.  Not cool at all.  

But then I thought we were on an upswing and I was looking forward to returning to work for a couple of days this week.  Until 2am this morning when the cycle of not breathing started all over again.  Christopher actually asked me to sleep on the downstairs couch to be near him.  That's the first time I've had a kid "need" me in a long time.  But it was also pretty scary.

And so I spent a couple of hours contacting every single client scheduled this week and clearing my calendar.  And that is super hard for me.  I have a very strong work ethic.  I have a strong responsibility to my clients.  But I have an even stronger responsibility to my family.  Especially my children.  And I would tell every single one of my clients to choose their family first.  Once again, I have to walk my talk.  There was, of course, no question that this was the right choice.  But sometimes the right choices are still hard ones.

So, today I'm home.  Tired.  So.Very.Tired.  Our naturopath is out of the office until tomorrow, but thankfully, the local naturopathic clinic in town got Christopher in late this afternoon.  We are pretty sure we know what's going on.  We just don't know how to stop it.  Hopefully we'll get some answers on that today.  I don't know how much longer I can do this.  I don't know how much longer my body goes before shutting down.  I don't know how I will get well until my kids are well.  

And I'm so frustrated.  I was finally finding myself again.  I had established a good meditation and workout practice.  I was finding my strength and endurance again.  And now I feel broken again.  My body is beat.  I don't have the energy to do anything.  The only time I've been out of the house and have seen other people since I left work last week was our trip to the ER.  My house is a disaster area of leftover Christmas and boxes of cold treatments and kleenex.  It's wearing on me, but there's no energy to do anything about it.  

Not to even mention the grief that I haven't had time to feel this holiday season. Or the fact that my dad's birthday is coming up in 4 days.  

This is hard.  The world I'm living in right now is exhausting and isolating and really, really hard.  

But setbacks are part of the process.  This means there is something good on the horizon.  I just wish I knew when.  It feels like it has just been one hit after another since October 3rd when my dad was admitted to the hospital.  I want to smile.  I want to laugh.  I want have fun again.  Of course, I know I will.  I just wish I knew when.  

And I know I'm not alone.  Many are suffering this year.  Many are suffering right now.  And we'll all get through it.  It's just hard right now.  So, if you're reading this and things are hard for you too, please know you're not alone.  And that out of these hard times come better days.  And all we can do is continue take things one step at a time.  

Do You Ever Wonder....

Do you ever wonder about the people who have come through your life, how you met them, and how important they were...or are...to parts of your life that you could never have imagined? 

No?

Just me?  ;)

I hope some of you do this too.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  

I was thinking about this before a package showed up on my doorstep yesterday from my very first doula client from 15 years ago.  A care package to let me know she was thinking about me in my grief.  

15 years ago, I had a 2 year old son.  My youngest son didn't even exist on this earth yet.  So much life has happened in 15 years.  And yet, had I not had my first son, taken the childbirth class I took, hired the doula I hired who empowered me to see something in me I couldn't see...had none of that happened, I would never have taken a doula training, I would never have met this couple, I would never have shared three births with them, they would never have helped me refinance a house and purchase two others, and that package would never have showed up on my door with the most lovely card that said the exact words I needed to hear in that moment.

And if I had never hired that doula, and become empowered, and done that doula training and had I never gone to that birth, I may never have fallen in love with the birth world the way I did.  I likely would have never trained as a childbirth educator and gone on to teach childbirth classes at a hospital where I met my husband who was my rock during both my parents' deaths.  I'm not sure how I would have handled either of those deaths without him. Not to mention, I love him and can't imagine my life without him.  Period.

And had I not become a doula, I would have not met one of my friends...and likely may not have maintained such a close friendship with another friend....because we were all doulas together.  Those two friends spent the night with me in my dad's apartment the night before he died.  Those are true friends.  And the other people who offered to spend the night with me were also people I met through serendipitous ways.  I was surrounded by love and support throughout my dad's dying process by so many people that I met through so many different ways.  

Had I not had the doula I had who empowered me in birth, I may not have felt as empowered as a mother to make the choices I made.  I may not have reached out to strangers on the internet on mom boards looking for support.  I am still friends with several of those women.  And I have never met them face to face.  But I would 100% call them friends.  We've all been through a lot together and have been a support to one another.  All our kids are nearly grown now and we're still friends.  I have learned so much from all of them.

I'm not really a believer in coincidences.  I believe things happen as they are supposed to.  But it's truly fascinating to sit and think about how one decision spawns others.  And in making decisions, people come in to one's life, exactly when they are needed.

The day I signed up for a childbirth class in Seattle ultimately resulted in a package showing up on my door yesterday.  Had I chosen another class...EVERYTHING in my life could have been different.  Of course, if my dad had chosen to take a transfer to Georgia when I was in 7th grade, my life would have been completely different.  Every day, we all make decisions, never knowing, or often never even considering, whose life may be affected and what might come from those decisions years and years later.

Life is FASCINATING.  And grief makes you think. And ponder life.  And loss.  And friendship.  And love.  And death.  

And in that...there is beauty in this whole grief thing.

Thank Goodness for New Days

My last post was a rough one.  It was real.  But it was rough.  And I promised to be transparent so it's important to share the rough stuff.  But it's just as important to share the good days...or weeks.  And this has been one.  

After what was definitely a rough weekend, it's nice to be able to say that the rough weekend was followed by a good week.  I mean, like any week, it had its ups and downs, but here I am on Friday and I'm feeling good.  Better than I have felt in some time.

And here's what I attribute that to...

1) Time.

It has been 41 days since my dad died.  That's not a lot.  And I still have a LOT of work to do.  I've got this whole year of firsts to get through.  Really, the grief work is just beginning.  BUT...time DOES help.  I still have a moment every night where I remind myself to pick up the phone and call dad and then am immediately reminded that he's gone.  Every night.  That stinks.  But it also reminds me of how close we were.  And that gives me some peace.  I quite vividly now can see him well up with tears when he would tell people how grateful he was for me.  He said, quite often, "she is a wonderful daughter".  When dad first died, I was carrying a lot of guilt...I wondered if I could have done more.  Could I have stopped this from happening?  Truly...a whole stinking lot of guilt.  It's still there.  It's going to take time to work through it.  But 41 days later, I can more clearly see how close we were and that he knew I was there for him.  Until the very end.  

2) Being honest with my feelings and feeling everything that needs to be felt, no matter how much I may not want to feel the hard stuff.

I have felt ALL the feelings.  Whenever they come.  I feel them.  Whether I like it or not.  I'm not holding anything in.  I really feel this is a huge step in the grieving process.  And may be the hardest step.  We avoid pain in American culture.  Sometimes at all costs.  And I believe, wholeheartedly, that that's what holds us back.  That's what makes grief seep into our bones and store itself there...sometimes for ever.  And it comes out in other ways.  In illness.  In physical pain.  I refuse to let that happen.  I'm feeling it NOW.  I'm letting the grief fall in tear after tear after tear.  I will always miss my dad.  But I will not let grief store itself inside of me.  I will feel it.  Today, tomorrow, 5 years from now, 10 years from now...whenever it shows up.  I will meet it head on and I will feel what needs to be felt.  

3) Validation

This week, I had coffee with a very good friend.  My only close friend (who is not family) who has lost both her parents.  Sitting with her and chatting about the experience was so beneficial for me.  The validation of the complexity of this loss was immeasurable for me.  One day, I hope I can give the same validation to someone else.  

4) Meditation

On my week of bereavement leave, my goal was to meditate every day and get my regular meditation practice going again.  I cannot explain enough how important this has been for me.  I have kept it up and meditate almost daily (didn't over the holiday weekend).  It has been so healing and has given me so much more clarity than I had without it.  Through meditation I have been able to find a way to start moving forward instead of being stuck in my grief.  It has been huge for me.

5) Working Out

In conjunction with the meditation, the working out has helped me start connecting with my physical body again.  And how strong it is.  It hasn't given up on me.  Even when I gave up on it.  It feels good to be reconnected and through meditation and working out, I've found new goals for myself that give me something to focus on outside of grief.  This is also a big step.

A few weeks ago (heck, just last Sunday), I felt so stuck in my grief.  It felt like quicksand that I couldn't claw my way out of.  I know it's very likely I will be there again.  There's still lots of work to do.  But I also know that the steps I have taken to take care of myself will help me remember that there is always another day, another hour, another moment.  I will not be stuck forever.  Sometimes it's important to stop and sit with grief.  And other times, it's important to take a step forward.  

On Sunday I said I was not taking any steps.  I was not going to face the hot coals for a while.  This week I feel like I walked over several of them.  

Today I am decorating the house for the holidays.  I don't expect that to be tear-free.  But I expect that I can put on some holiday music and enjoy the experience, for the most part.  That is BIG.  

So, here's to new days, self care, and to taking a few steps forward.  :)