Allow yourself your grieving. Allow it to express in whatever way feels right to you. Grieving is the way we heal the loss we feel for someone we love.
—Deborah Duda
Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas until the age of thirty-five, I would feel a deep sense of loss inside. A deep, deep sadness. It was as though I had lost something really important. No matter how excited I was about the holidays, no matter how busy I was preparing for the holiday season, I would invariably feel a deep gnawing for the entire month. It was as if I had once had something very special and had lost it. Some years I would go into such a deep depression that I would tell my family I just couldn't participate in the holidays. Feeling the heavy sense of loss of something that I didn't even understand, plus baking, shopping, wrapping presents, and tree-trimming were all just way too much for me.
There was also another feeling that was hard to cope with, a feeling as if I was once special but that something had happened and that specialness had been taken away. Every year I would mentally prepare myself. I would say affirmations, thinking that if I was in a good place mentally before December, maybe that would ward off my sadness. Some years I went into therapy, hoping that talking about it in advance would ward it off. No matter what I did, that deep sense of loss would begin all over again.
My wedding date was December 16, 1983. I was sure that when the time approached that year I would be so excited I just wouldn't fall into that all-too-familiar heaviness. But, sure enough, the first week in December rolled around and out came the tears! I always felt so little, as if I was a three-year-old again. I felt vulnerable, afraid, alone, and confused.
What the heck was this all about? Here I was, thirty-five years old, and this damn bogeyman would not go away. I prayed for help once again and soon afterward, I felt intuitively that I should call my mother. At first, my intellect got in the way and said not to bother her with this again, that she'd heard me talk about it for years. We had talked about it so much that there wasn't much more to say. Despite this, I did feel the inner nudging again, so I gave her a call.
Something was different this time. Maybe it was because I finally knew how to express my feelings more clearly or that it was just time for it to be revealed . . . I'm not sure. Maybe it was because this time I said more to my mom than just how sad and empty and depressed I felt, which is what I had always said in the past. Being in therapy was helping me to identify my feelings and talk about them more clearly.
I told my mom that I was feeling that heavy sense of loss again and didn't want it overshadowing the wedding. I just needed to talk through each feeling with her. I needed to tell her it felt as if I was once really special but that this feeling had just vanished from my life. I told her that I felt as if I wanted to go find what I had lost. It felt as if one day, long ago, I had been okay and the next day I was all alone.
As I was sharing these feelings with her, I was sobbing like a baby, which is what I did every December. Feeling the heaviness of my sense of loss and crying, my mom listened carefully to me and suddenly realized what was going on.
She told me that from the time I was a baby until I was four, a person who had dearly loved me was my grandpa. She said he would come over every day to see me. He always read to me, taught me things, and treated me as very special. When I turned three, he discovered he had cancer and wasn't able to come over every day for our visits. Also, I had a new baby brother. My life was changing.
Mom told me that right after Thanksgiving that year he got very sick, and in December he died. I never saw him after that Thanksgiving. She said they didn't know how to explain death to a four-year-old, so they just never said anything about Grandpa. As a little four-year-old, all I knew was that my best friend, who had been by my side every day of my life and who had treated me as very special, never came back. I may have felt that I did something wrong or that his going away had something to do with the new baby. I don't know how I felt or reasoned it out in my childhood mind. We had never talked about my grandfather's death, but all my feelings about that loss were still in there! Every December they reminded me of my loss.
That night and for the next few days, I let myself feel all of it. Whenever my intellect tried to take over and tell me that enough is enough, I told it to stop trying to interfere. I wanted to be free from the sadness. I talked to my grandfather, pretended he was there, and thanked him for all he had given me while he was here. It felt as if a tremendous healing took place over that three-day period. It was wonderful. It has been twenty-five years since that time, and I can honestly say that I have not experienced another black December in all that time.
I can't emphasize enough the importance of getting those feelings of loss out of your body. In my case, those feelings always manifested in my body as digestion problems and headaches throughout the month of December. It was as physically difficult as it was emotionally trying for me during that time of year, until I discovered the truth about the close, loving relationship I had with my grandfather.
Throughout our lives, we suffer from many different kinds of losses: the death of a loved one; the breakup of a relationship; the pain of a divorce; or the loss of a home through natural disaster, a fire, or moving to another city. We experience the loss of a job, our health, money, success, a pet, material possessions, teachers, or our youth.
Everyone experiences loss. It's a part of life. When we suffer from a physical injury, we are given time to heal. People send us cards and flowers. Sometimes we are even paid to take time off so we can heal. Unfortunately, when we suffer an emotional injury, such as the loss of a loved one, not only are we expected to rise above it and get back to work, sometimes people don't know what to say to us, so they don't say anything. On top of feeling the loss, we feel terribly alone.
For most of us, loss and grief generate a multitude of feelings. Some of these stem from our inability to know what to do. We don't know how much time we're allowed to grieve. We feel guilty if we don't grieve “appropriately,” yet what is appropriate? Is it okay to feel pain, cry, yell, scream, be numb, get angry, play sad songs, wallow in memories, get mad at God?
For many of us, the response is to do whatever we can to make the pain go away as fast as possible. We search for ways to distract us from our pain. Or we pretend we're over our pain so that (a) we don't have to feel our feelings; and (b) others don't have to be bothered with our feelings.
The bottom line is that there is nothing worse than the pain of loss. The bad news is that it hurts like hell and there is no magic pill to relieve it. Even if your doctor gives you a “magic” pill, the pain is still inside and needs to be released. The good news is that by going inside we may also release other issues, other negative emotions that have been bottled up. As difficult as it may seem at the time, loss really does promote healing.
Time and going into the pain is what brings about the cure. When you have a pain, whether it's physical or emotional, take a deep breath and lean into the pain. Don't resist it. The less you resist the pain, the quicker you will come out of it.
Feel the loss. Feel the emptiness. Feel the aloneness. You will not die if you allow yourself to feel it. It will be less stressful to your body if you feel it rather than resist it. Once you allow yourself to go into the pain, your healing process begins. Closing the door on a chapter in our lives is difficult but not impossible. We do survive loss.
Perhaps you're grieving a loss right now. If so, do you have any physical pain? Where in your body is it being stored? You may not be able to answer this question right away, and that's okay. It is enough to start this process of letting go by giving some thought to the losses you have had in your life and whether or not you allowed yourself to adequately grieve those losses.
The reason I ask about physical pain is that there's a good chance that your body is acting it out in some way, if you're not emotionally grieving the loss. For example, some time ago, my minister died. He had been a mentor of mine for quite a while. When he was diagnosed with cancer, it was really hard for me to accept. His death shortly thereafter was even harder. I didn't want to feel the loss emotionally.
I was afraid that if I went into the pain of his death, I would be devastated and wouldn't be able to come out of it. On the day of his memorial service, I had the most excruciating lower back pain. I ended up in the emergency room of the hospital. The doctor said there was something wrong with my kidneys, but had no idea what it could be. Kidneys have to do with elimination. I believe that my kidneys were saying, Eliminate this pain. Let it out. Stop holding it in. I spent the rest of the day crying about his death. By the end of the day, the lower back pain was gone. These unresolved feelings really do cause us physical pain!
If you discover in doing the journal work at the end of this chapter that you have not grieved over some of your losses, I strongly suggest that you take some time and write down all of your feelings about each loss in your journal. If you feel fearful of becoming overwhelmed with emotion, I recommend that you call a local hospital and see if grief groups are available. If not, ask them whom they would recommend, or ask your doctor or therapist. Grieving does not need to go on forever. When you really face the loss and feel it, when you fully express your feelings about it, you become free to move back into life. By pretending that the feelings of grief are not inside, you become imprisoned by your own feelings. You are not free to live your life spontaneously with an open heart. Pray for the courage to complete your grief and free yourself from the pain of loss. It's worth it!
Exercise 1
Identifying the Loss
In your journal, make two columns of approximately the same size by drawing a vertical line down the middle of the page. Label the left column “My Losses,” the right column “How I Did or Didn't Respond.”
Now, in the corresponding column, write down the losses you have had in your lifetime. Go into as much or as little detail as you wish. Then, in the right column, describe how you responded to that loss. If you felt numb about the loss, or simply didn't respond, write that.
Exercise 2
Losses Experienced from Deep Within
Divide a blank page in your journal with a vertical line down the middle, labeling the left column “My Child's Losses” and the right column “How I (When a Child) Responded to the Loss.”
Using your nondominant hand, ask your inner child to write about the losses it has suffered. Remember, this is a child's response. Your inner child's answers will be different from your own. The goal here is to get all those losses out of your body and onto paper.