Finding Time to Grieve Years After Your Loss

Finding Time to Grieve Years After Your Loss

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The idea of finding time to grieve may sound ridiculous. At least for those being crushed by the weight of early grief, especially after losing a child.

But when grief is years or decades old, it isn’t always easy to find time to express and release our constant grief. The grief buried below the surface of our daily activities.

Grief is a bereaved parent’s constant companion. Much like a shadow that clings to us wherever we go. As long as our child is dead, we live with grief. There is no “getting over it” or “moving on.” At least not in the way those terms are usually implied.

Instead, we must learn how to accommodate grief as a fundamental part of life. Over time, the pain of grief feels less intense and overwhelming. Many learn to make needed adjustments so it doesn’t interfere with normal routines and day-to-day activities.

Once you’ve lost a child, the idea of what “normal” means is completely transformed.

Normal includes daily thoughts of a child who is frozen in time. A child who is never able to age as they should. The finer details of that beautiful child and their life become blurred as the years pass. This is especially true and painful when you lose a young child. One that you only got to spend a few wonderful years (or months, days, hours, or minutes) with.

It’s been over a decade since my 4-year-old daughter died. I have certainly adjusted to the new normal of life. I’ve learned how to enjoy and savor what life has to offer despite the gaping hole still left inside me from losing her.

In fact, life has gotten to a place where I find myself needing to make a concerted effort to find time to actually grieve.

As I said before, it’s not that my grief is gone. To the contrary, the loss of a child changes your DNA. You never experience life in the same way as you did before they died. But that doesn’t relegate you to a life of misery and despair.

You can harness your grief in a way where life becomes more profound and meaningful than before. Some become so good at adjusting to living with grief, they simply need to express it outwardly from time to time.

One of the ways we learn to adjust to life without our child is by compartmentalizing our grief in order to function in the world around us.

Over the years, grief becomes like those various piles of clutter that build up around your house. The chore of having to sort through them and figure out where things belong and what to get rid of is uncomfortable and taxing. So you shove the “clutter” away just to get it out of view. Of course, with the intention of sorting through it some other time.

But before you know it, your emotional compartments are overflowing. Just like those piles of clutter in your house. And cramming more “clutter” into them becomes more and more difficult. That clutter of unwanted feelings from grief is like pressure building up under a volcano or earthquake fault line.

You know that at some point the pressure will become so great, it will have no choice but to erupt. And it can erupt with a force that can destroy everything in its path. Just like in those old cartoons, the closet will become so overstuffed that when you open the door to put something else in, you’ll become buried in the avalanche of unwanted clutter. Or in this case, emotions.

The best way to deal with grief as the years pass is to find smaller, healthy ways to let off steam. Relieve the pressure building up below the surface before it becomes destructive.

It’s like pulling out a small pile of that emotional clutter and going through it. No matter how bothersome, stressful, or painful it may feel. And then repeating the process little by little, again and again, over time.

For me, I usually turn to writing about how it feels. While I write on a public blog, for others it could be in a journal or a letter to your child. Other times I find the simple act of walking quietly in nature releases some of the pressure.

Other options might include sharing your thoughts with a support group or counseling — online or in person. Or maybe doing something in honor of your child, like volunteering or donating. Some may choose to look through pictures and create an album or scrapbook.

Whatever it may be for you, it’s just important that you make the time to process your feelings before the pressure gets anywhere close to erupting.

There’s no right or wrong answer to how you choose to express your grief after many years have passed.

You do whatever feels right for you. The important thing is that you do it. And you can take some amount of comfort in knowing that you’re never alone on this journey.

All you need to do is look, and people who are experiencing the same journey will always be there for support and help along the way.

The Ache of Losing a Child

The Ache of Losing a Child

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Last week was the (would have been) 11th birthday of my daughter. In a few weeks, it will be the 7th anniversary of her death.

That leaves four years. Four short years we had with her that were simply not enough.

To be sure, I am grateful for those four years.

I know people who were never able to conceive after years of trying. I’ve seen the heartache of those who suffered miscarriages or whose babies were stillborn. I have sat witness to the stories of those who only got to experience a few hours or days with their babies. Or those whose child never lived to see their first birthday.

I’ve also grieved next to those who had more than four years with their children before the unthinkable happened.

No matter the age or circumstance when our children died, we are all left with the same deep ache that will never go away.

Our children are a part of us. They are the embodiment of our greatest achievement and our deepest vulnerabilities. It is a bond that can never be broken. Not even by death. But they did die. And when they died, they took a part of us we can never get back. And it hurts like hell. 

The pain is unbearable and unrelenting at first. But over time the stabbing pain transforms into a duller ache. We learn to adapt to a life with that ache. With some work and determination, we can re-learn meaning, purpose, and joy. We can once again embrace the sweetness life has to offer if we know where to look.

But that ache forever remains.

When life shuts a door, another one opens. We’ve heard that saying time and again. And the death of a child is like a door forever stuck shut. We desperately try to peer through the keyhole to glimpse what once was. But that keyhole becomes more obstructed and harder to see through with the passage of time. We ache for the chance to open that door once again; knowing full well we can’t.

No matter how many new doors we open and travel through; no matter how wonderful it may be on the other side of these new doors; a part of us will always cling to that one door. We desperately try to peer through that keyhole while remembering the profound love that resided within it.

I am happy with where my life is heading. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I’m grateful for the joy and love that fills me. I treasure my family.

But that ache is still there. Every moment of every day.

For the rest of my life, I’ll keep looking through that keyhole. I’ll do it to remember all of the joy and profound love she brought me in those four short years. And yet…I’ll keep opening new doors to see where life takes me. She would have wanted it that way.

Grief 2.0

Grief 2.0

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As I write this, I’m laying in a field of grass at a park near my house. My son is happily playing with some newly made friends a few feet away. A cool breeze dances through the leaves of the trees overhead, creating a beautiful symphony of whispers. I listen to bursts of laughter peppered in the conversations of the kids who have joined together to make the most of their short time at the park before the sun sets and they have to head home.

All of this makes me want to pause and savor this moment.

As adults, we get so caught up in the trappings of work and assumed responsibilities that we often lose sight of what it is we’re actually living for.

Many of us inadvertently end up living to work. We feel pressure to provide our children a better life than what we had. But must do so in a world where the cost of living seems to be on an endless upward trajectory. Society teaches us to define our worth by the importance of our profession and the amount of money we make. We work a ridiculous amount of hours at the expense of quality time with those we love and hold dear.

Many of us try to numb the growing pain and frustration we feel by filling our time with distractions and surrounding ourselves with “things” we think will make us happy. And we hope they will somehow fill the void — oblivious to the fact that the void is caused when we neglect the actual “living” part of life.

It is the part of living that kids instinctively get: making the most of the time left before the sun sets.

Sometimes we are faced with very sobering wake-up calls that point out this void and error of our ways. For most of you reading this, it was the death of someone so dear to you that life as you knew it came to an abrupt end.

While we’ve always known death to be inevitable, we now know all too well that the sun may set long before we are prepared or ready for it. For most of us, that wake-up call caused us to lose our taste for the frivolities of life.

We no longer seem to have the patience for superficial relationships, gossip, or activities that have no apparent point other than filling time. Many of us now crave purpose and meaning in everything we do. For we know that the sun may drop from the sky without a moment’s notice. We want to make the rest of our days count.

Grief does that to us. And yet, after losing someone we can’t imagine living without, we seem to stop living all together. We simply exist.

In its first iteration, grief is too overwhelming to do much of anything except try to get from one day to the next in one piece. We’re still here. Our hearts still inexplicably beat. We somehow still draw a breath. But we remain suspended in our bubble of grief. Not able to touch the world around us that we once knew.

So here we are with a new conundrum. We have seen the error of our past ways. We have realized that life is fleeting and meant to be lived to its fullest, appreciated for the gift that it is, and filled with purpose and meaning.

And yet it still feels impossibly out of reach.

This time, instead of the trappings of work and responsibility, we are trapped inside impossible, smothering pain.

We hear from others who’ve been in our shoes that these intense feelings won’t last. We’re told it won’t always be this painful. It’s just that now is our time to grieve. Now is a time to lean on others for support and guidance. Now is a time to look within. 

There is no timetable for how long this phase of grief should last. Everyone is unique. And so is our individual pace of grieving.

As for me…

It’s been many years since my daughter, Margareta, died. It is only NOW that I finally feel ready to move onto my next phase of grief. Call it Grief 2.0 if you will.

In hindsight, Grief 1.0 for me was all about coming to terms with a life without my daughter in it.

It has been a slow and difficult process. I was focused entirely on how to take my pain and learn how to transform it into opportunities for personal growth. It was about learning what my purpose and passions are. Learning to redefine relationships with those around me. Deciding what “living” really means for me in this new landscape of my life.

And as much as I felt and thought I had come so far over these last few years, I realize now I wasn’t really living yet. Oh…I talked a good talk. Experiencing insight after insight, I was an example of hope to those still in the earliest part of Grief 1.0.

But I hadn’t yet reached the point where I was ready to stop talking about what it means to live and actually start living. 

With various circumstances coming into play, I took a hiatus from writing about grief. My husband pointed out that it had become all consuming to me. I had begun to feel obligated to produce posts on a regular basis and became addicted to looking at how many people were reading and sharing my insights. The more I felt I was helping others, the more I felt my life held purpose and meaning.

But at what expense? At the neglect of the relationships that mean the most to me?

During that time, I took advantage of an opportunity to instead write about how to live your best life — the one you’ve always dreamed of but never knew how to actually achieve. I wrote about ways to overcome all the self-imposed obstacles that keep you trapped and immobilized in a state of fear. Fear of failing. Fear of trying in the first place.

It was an eye-opening experience. Here I was giving other people motivation to take those first real steps towards “living,” and yet I wasn’t doing it myself. The truth is that I hadn’t been ready to.

For me, Grief 2.0 is all about taking what I’ve learned and actually start living this life until my sun sets.

It is about taking action on everything I’ve learned about what it means to truly live. It is about seeking new experiences. New adventures. New ways of improving my closest relationships. It is finding the balance between using my passions and skills to help the greater good while also using them to benefit me, my family, and my friends.

It is about doing all these things while still honoring Margareta and recognizing how she’s inspired this new phase of living. Though I’m not exactly sure what my future path will look like, I finally feel I have the actionable tools and knowledge to explore what lies ahead.

. . .

Back in the park, the sun is beginning its final descent to the horizon where it will soon disappear.

My son and I are about to head home. He has enjoyed his time at the park with his new friends. That he may never see them again does not matter. What matters to him is that he made the most of the time he had while he was there.

And from here on out…that is what I intend to do as well.

Why We Can’t Just “Move On”

Why We Can’t Just “Move On”

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I and many people I know are suffering from a broken heart.

Now this may not seem like a big deal to you. After all, people get broken hearts all the time. Most of the time people get over it. Eventually, their attention turns towards finding new love to invest their time and energy in. Sooner or later, their heart heals — and hopefully the wiser for it.

Unfortunately, these are not the type of broken hearts I am referring to.

The kind of broken heart I am talking about is so severe and so devastating, it can never fully heal.

It is caused by losing someone whose absence leaves a gaping, endless hole in your heart. A hole that simply can never be filled. It is caused by losing a person who could never, ever be replaced and who can never, ever come back. In my case, it was caused by the sudden death of my 4-year-old daughter in 2009.

Oh, I hear all you doubters out there. You see on the news that people die every day. And from your point of view, their families and friends seem to get over it and move on with life. So why can’t we?

Some of you may think the people who can’t seem to let it go are just a bunch of “poor me” types who want attention. You may even be friends with some of us. Or more likely, used to be friends with us. You probably can’t fathom why we still feel the need to attend support groups, visit the cemetery every week, or randomly break down in tears – for years after the death. Many of you feel compelled to tell us how we’re supposed to get over our grief.

If it were only that simple.

So, why? Why can’t we just get over it and move on with our lives as if everything was back to normal?

Unfortunately, there isn’t an answer I could put into words that would ever satisfy you. Maybe the problem lies in the terminology being used. We may be suffering from a broken heart as you would define it. But it’s more than that. It might better be described as a broken soul or a broken spirit. Maybe it’s best to just cut out the noun. We are simply broken. Until you actually experience this type of loss, you’ll never fully understand.

So maybe the better question is: why does it bother you so much?

Is it the tears that make you uncomfortable? Does our demeanor hamper your care-free lifestyle? Is it the in-your-face reminder that you will die someday – and maybe much sooner than you plan to? Whatever your reason, you need to know that if you feel compelled to tell us what we need to do and how we need to do it, you’re not doing us any favors or speeding up our grief process. You’re just adding to our pain.

The fact is if you had enough patience, you’d see that over time people like us are better able to reintegrate into “normal” life. We learn to smile and truly experience happiness again. We don’t cry as often – and when we do, we can usually wait until no one is looking. Eventually, we may even convince you that we have finally moved on with our lives. But behind the scenes you better believe that the pain is still there.

The longing never goes away. The regret is here to stay. Painful reminders that such an important person in our life is missing constantly surround us.

We don’t just think of them on special occasions; we think of them daily. Some days we may think of them every hour or every minute. This is how we keep them present in our lives. This is our personal memorial to the overwhelming love they brought to our lives when they were here. Do you really want to take that away from us?

Instead of focusing on the idea that we should move on with our lives to make you more comfortable, maybe you could focus on learning how to look the other way and not let our grief bother you so much.

What is Strength in the Face of Grief?

What is Strength in the Face of Grief?

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“You’re so strong.”

If you’ve suffered the devastating loss of a loved one, you’ve probably heard the phrase. I certainly did after the death of my 4-year-old daughter, Margareta, in 2009. But what does it really mean, anyway?

What exactly is the definition of “strength” in grief?

Chances are, if you ask a griever and a non-griever that question you’ll get very different perspectives. When people told me how strong I was after the death of my daughter, they sincerely meant it as a sign of support.

In the early weeks and months after Margareta’s death, it was usually told to me in the context that I’d seemingly reintegrated back into the “normal world.” I went to work, took my other children to activities and events, ran errands outside the house, etc.

But in their minds, this was opposed to…what? Should I have been so devastated that all I could do is lie in the fetal position while hysterically sobbing 24-hours a day? There were certainly many times I wanted to do just that.

Maybe it was brought on by their relief that I hadn’t succumbed to the continual urges to take my own life. Because many parents can’t imagine how they will continue living after the death of their child. I certainly didn’t. Many times I thought the only reason I was still alive was for the sake of my other children. And I’ve heard many bereaved parents say the same thing.

Strength, from this perspective, equals stoicism. On the internet stoicism is defined as, “the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint.”

So when did stoicism become the standard definition of strength in grief?

I suppose it’s because we see soldiers as stoic. Warriors are stoic. Real men don’t cry – or so we’re told. Women who show their emotions too freely are seen as weak or crazy and subject to ridicule.

Real strength is apparently the ability to keep our emotions buried and controlled. Or so we’re trained to believe.

Problems occur when grievers don’t display “strength” and are visibly distraught too long after the funeral is over.

Frustrated former supporters often begin to distance themselves and tell these people to “get over it” and “move on.” It’s only death, after all. They’ve gone to a better place, right? Can’t we just remember that and be happy for them now that they’re at peace with God?

The problem is that most of us can’t. The pain and emotions are just too overwhelming. We are in survival mode.

If I had to illustrate what this level of grief was like, I picture a person on a steep hill using all their strength just to keep a boulder larger than themselves from rolling down and crushing them. That is why grief is just as physically exhausting as it is emotionally.

So when they see us as “strong”, chances are we feel anything but.

We feel weak and vulnerable. For many of us, we are barely getting by each day for years after the funeral. Just getting out of bed each morning seems impossible, but somehow we do. We don’t know how we’re going to get through each day, but somehow we put one foot in front of the other and keep moving without understanding how.

And many of us are sure that at any second we will lose our tenuous grip on this boulder of grief and it will surely crush us. For a long, long time, that show of strength to those around us feels like a sham.

For many of us, not a day goes by that we aren’t acutely aware that our loved one is missing from our lives. And the constant reminder is painful. We know that if we continue to show this pain, the negative feedback we hear from those around us will just make it worse.

And so we hide our pain to become “strong” in their eyes. But it creates a distance between us that is not easily undone.

How do we continue to hold that boulder at bay for years on end, or in some cases, for the rest of our lives? For me, and for many people I have come to know who are devastated by grief, we seek out others like us. Others who have survived this unbearable pain and who, we hope, can teach us how they did it.

We search for safe environments where we can express our pain in an effort to process it. Each of these things provide the support we need to continue to keep this boulder from crushing us.

I would argue that asking for help in the face of overwhelming pain is one of the strongest things we can do.

The act of admitting we are in over our heads and cannot do this alone is sometimes as difficult as losing our loved one. Letting other people in to see our deepest vulnerabilities and fears is not weakness; it is one of the ultimate displays of strength – grieving or not.

Every time we reach out and ask for help or support, that boulder of grief becomes just a little lighter.

The supportive hands of others brace us as we push against that boulder. Eventually, these hands of support may even be able to help break down the boulder until it is a more manageable size and weight. It doesn’t matter who you ask for help and support, it only matters that you do.

To those of you who offer, “You’re so strong” as words of comfort, I ask you to consider replacing it with, “I’m here for you,” if you want to be truly supportive.

For those of you holding that boulder of grief at bay, I hope you continue to reach out for support to help lighten your load. For if I know anything in the wake of my daughter’s death, I know that there are many people who want to help you. You just have to make the effort to find them.