(The duality of processing trauma)
Are you processing grief or processing loss?
When a heavy “grief wave” comes is it really just loss?
This question was posed to me and I struggled to find a response.
Grief has been everything.
All I’ve known for years now.
What if I am the one keeping myself sick?
What if grief is not the bad guy?
Have I confused a sheep in wolves clothing as I traverse the path of disillusionment?
The more I muled it over the more this theory started to click into place.
Lately I have been begging god to tell me where I have fallen short. It seemed that for all the times I have been fearlessly running head first into grief guns blazing, BLAZING, I always fall defeated and slightly more cracked. “How is this possible?” I asked slightly passive. “Please just tell me what I am missing.”
Then there it was. I am not processing the loss I am processing grief.
The problem with this is that grief is not my enemy!
Wait……
……what?!?!!
Grief is not the enemy I have formed from shadows in the recesses of my mind. Grief is the hand I desperately need as I flounder in the swampy waters that is loss. Flailing about I swat away the very thing trying to help me.
We see it day after day.
I’m having a bad grief wave.
Grief sucks.
I am suffocating in grief……
I say it all the time! ALL! THE! TIME!
The truth is I am drowning in my inability to clearly see and assess the loss that grief was designed to help with.
Looking to my grief pattern I can clearly see that very seldom, if at all, I admit I am angry, sad, denying, suppressing (depressing), or bartering for things I feel entitled to for some reason. I am creating feelings around what never was. Instead I validate and reaffirm myself by condoning my erratic behavior as “grief” Justifying the perpetuation of my self victimizing.
No more.
Please don’t take this as judgement against another’s path; In the slightest. I am just introspectively assessing my decisions and coping mechanisms as I enter my third year of intense loss.
Today I chose to take back power. I will try not fighting grief. Holding it as close as my justification. I will dig deeper into the root of my emotions and call out their name.
I am grateful for grief and all it has given me. May clarity illuminate the pile of laundry I made into a monster back to that which I can piece apart and rebuild anew.
Please join Sheaya and myself at 8 pm Eastern Monday October 8th for an open dialogue.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/378852625872933
Grief Resilience also holds a weekly grief meeting Wednesday’s at 8:30 eastern (open to all)
https://www.youtube.com/user/Sheayadawn
Sheaya’s YouTube channel is also focusing on the 12 spiritual principles 😁
*****Shout out to my BBFL 💗 always asking the questions I need to hear *****
The Optimistic Widow 