Being Kind to Yourself in Grief.
One of the hardest things about grief is that it makes me so hard on myself. For the first several weeks after my son died, I relished that there were no expectations on me or my feelings, from myself or anyone else. I was devastated and broken and the whole world around me knew it. Everyone accepted that I could not cook meals or drive my kids around or put a coherent sentence together.
As time ticked agonizingly by, somehow a nagging voice began to grow in the corner of my grief. Without ever having been through this before, I still managed to have the weight of expectation creep into my grief. Maybe you have these same nagging thoughts too? “Shouldn’t you be…?” or “Why aren’t you…?” or my personal favorite “Do you really STILL need to carry that blanket around?”
After John Paul Raphael died, I carried his blanket. He had the most lovely, snuggly, soft blue baby blanket and I carried it everywhere with me after he died – in the car, to church, to the grocery store, even to the dentist. It made me feel the tiniest bit better when everything felt terrible and I didn’t care what anyone else thought. Months went by, and I still carried that blanket. At some point, I realized I had started to judge my own grief. I carried blankie around, but I became critical of myself for needing it, as if I had passed some invisible deadline for feeling “better”.
Can you relate? Have you felt in your grief that there are expectations for how long and how much you are allowed to grieve? Or at least to grieve publicly? In many ways, it was so much easier when the whole world expected us to wear black and be in official mourning for an entire year. Now, outside of a funeral or burial, our culture has dismissed the formal practice of mourning and extended periods of grief can be met with confusion or judgment.
Early in my grief, a friend shared her wisdom with me. Since grief is here to stay, the sooner we can “get to know” it, the easier grief will be to live with. She recommended a practice of radical acceptance and curiosity: So this is what grief looks like today. Most of us have never lost a child before now. How could we possibly know what we need or what to do or for how long to do it? What if we trusted our bodies and our hearts to know what they needed and tried to silence the invasive, judgy critic in our mind?
Are you sad? Are you tired? Do you need to watch a sad movie or be distracted by a good friend? Do you need to slow down or exercise or sit in his room and cry? Do you need sleep or healthier food or less wine? Do you need to ignore the text or reach out for help or visit her grave?
All of us here are on a terrible journey learning to carry the burden of loss. You are so brave. I am so proud of you. This is so brutally hard. Be kind and gentle to your own heart as you make your way through another day without your child.
So this is what grief looks like today.
