In one of my posts, I wrote about the difficult time I had with PTSD and grief after the loss of my first husband, a combat medic, in Vietnam when I was twenty. I explained that I had buried the pain for many years. Eventually, I found therapy. It was helpful and writing about my loss was also healing.
Shortly after the post, I received an email from a young mother who read it. She had questions regarding grief and her difficulty with therapy. She said the pain was too awful and too hard for her to confront.
I urged her to continue and to stay with it. Give it a chance. Therapy was a solid beginning. She would learn how to tame the grief:
“Is it normal to feel awful after a first session of cognitive behavior therapy? I’ve lost a child and I’m losing my mind!”
Confronting the problem, the pain, is the first step and, yes, it is the hardest. The natural human reaction, what we’re most comfortable doing, is avoiding pain, so we bury it —sometimes, for years, like with PTSD, or we try and run from it. That only prolongs healing because, as I learned, we take it with us wherever we go.
The next step is giving our inner self permission, sometimes an outright directive, to embrace (feel) the pain. That’s hard, too. Pain is not something to welcome for most of us. The natural human tendency is to run from anything painful. Pain hurts, but once we allow ourselves to feel it, it becomes a big part of our healing.
Here is where writing about it is so cathartic. There is something very healing about seeing our deepest thoughts and feelings on paper. It’s personal and no one ever has to read it except us. When we’re done, we can rip it up and throw it away —symbolically, it represents pain and we’re throwing the pain away to access our good memories instead.
Only after we complete those steps, can we move on to the next one: “Let it go.” We have to let the pain go to heal, so we can move forward.
No, this isn’t easy either. There is nothing about grief that’s easy, but it’s a process we have to go through. We may have to go through the above steps several times, but each time we do, it will get a little easier.
I realize, calling these ‘steps’ makes it sound simpler than it is, but each time the pain comes back, our good memories take the place of the deep hurt. We are healing but we are also learning how to live again —without our loved one.
From someone who has been there, please trust me. It does get easier. There will always be a few triggers that bring it back: a birthday, the anniversary of their death, the scent of their cologne, but you will have learned you have to face the pain, allow yourself to feel it, cry if you must, and then let it go.
You can do it. You are stronger than you think … and I wish you love.
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CJ, this piece is such a loving gift. Wise. Gentle. Thank you