Some years after my husband passed away, I started reading the book, " The Grieving Brain by Mary-Frances O'Connor. In truth I have yet to finish it because thinking about grief and losses took it's toll. A toll that was about remembrances. Avoidance behaviors seemed to work for a while during that time, however it caught up with me in other ways. Daily losses, were about as my daughter called them the missing. As the book described it, "felt lost without the daily interaction of the person who had been in her life everyday since she was born." A story of a sister grieving the loss of her younger sister to breast cancer.
What I want to point out is grief is about travelling through getting used to those daily interactions no longer being there from the biggest to the smallest of things. We catch ourselves in those times that we do things and turn to look for our loved ones, they are absent, missing. The book also mentions our brain is deeply encoded by our loved ones. Further more to help you understand what you are going through, may I add this from the book, "Encoding someone means that yearning is the inevitable result of separation from them. Our brain is doing everything in its power to keep us united with the ones we love."
Courage is the valor of our hearts when we learnt how to adapt to loosing someone, with the help of other family members, friends, community, time and hope we work through that part of our brain that is desperately doing what it thinks we need. Grief is gradual and we move at our own steam. Being present for some might mean an immediate realization of the loss, the missing interactions and life consequences that have to be dealt with. Moment to moment, day by day we trudge through the pain to find our new normal, ourselves.
Here and now moment will drift in like a warm summer breeze and unless taken over by grief in such a way, we cannot see what the world has to offer. If we take a gamble and let it that giggle from a little toddler, grandchild or child will awaken us to here I am and there they are - the beauty of being aware to create awareness. Awareness will grow when you become aware, taking a calculated risk to engage in life.
When you engage in life on your terms your way even in grief you give yourself an opportunity to be gifted with a troupe of magical beauty that abounds in life and awakens your heart. Experiencing life through a different lens at your pace and in your time.
Bringing together part of the past to build a future takes prayerful awareness, consideration and bravery. Bravery to venture away from the missing to find joy in the folds of new routines, structures and learning. Learning to do for yourself most of all. Discovering who you have become as an individual, singular again, for some it may be a child without a parent - finding strength to stand taller. There are those who have lost children which is an altogether challenging cluster especially if you have other children.
To grieve as a parent, a person while bringing your family together knowing your children need you aware of them and providing a sense of security. Such harmony is achievable when love, patience, faith and trust are present in you.
I remember when my son passed away, I got lost in the grief and decided that my grief was so devastating, I no longer wanted to be present to life. Eighteen months passed by - in and out of hospital with a thought pattern, I had nothing to live for. One day I heard a demeaning statement not worth repeating and with a robust tastes of anger and stubborn coursing through my veins, I aroused all my facilities trying to prove what I heard was wrong. I was going to show them.
In truth I was going to be shown a few truths and learning. Awakening my spirit got me to get present, present to what I had experienced over a year earlier. The day my son passed away, he was ever present to me and living life fully - only being 33 days old, my greatest wish was to see his eyes open. What a treasure it was to see those eye looking at me, open and soulfully aware. I calmly muttered, "I love you," In the last hours of his life he gave me his all. With Giselle like energy I was instantly warped to the present, my now a serious depression, denial, stigmas, unsupported and alone. This baby was courage, strength and love, hope and joy and I got to be his mother. How blessed was I.
This was my sunshine after my storm. An impetus to find and create more to get me through. I do not call the duration of time that went by but what I did know is that my lens shifted. How I chose to see the hurt - something that I could learn and grow from was the key. A turning point arrived and so had I.
There is nothing more tumultuous as loss, the lens we use to get through it matters. The sun will shine and joy can be found in your time and in your way because we cannot live in a constant of no light. Our soul needs nourishment and nurturing to thrive. Connecting with others, finding new interests, having closeness can counter and must of all we realize that we share commonalities with anyone who has ever been loved, felt love and lost.
Surrendering to the truth your truth will free you from the shackles that bind you. Feel the emotions, let them go through you, experience them as they arrive. I value these divine intervals of growth and appreciate the schooling.
Value is a mechanism we use to rate ourselves just as we do with experience. Often we put a low value on ourselves because of the magnitude of our life challenges and changes. Know that you are more than your experience. Know that you are being refined into an amazing spiritual being having a human experience. Your refinement is your gift to us. Keep being brilliantly YOU.
Thanks,
ME xx
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