SELF-ABANDONMENT IN GRIEF
The piece I am beginning to write differs from what I intended.
It’s so weird how things work like that. For example, I have an idea that seems generally good and possibly significant. And, like most of my ideas, I get guidance from Spirit to expound on.
I don’t know if the Blood Moon in Aries will shine large and bright in the sky tonight, but this week has been one surprising shift of events after another, pleasant…but surprising. I am unsure if it is astrological, but the theme for my week has been expecting one thing and receiving another. So, it is ideally in tune that today’s subject should be no different.
GRIEF…
I have come to realize that I have spent most of my life trying to avoid grief.
I think this is because I experienced so much of it in my childhood and adolescence due to being separated from people I dearly loved, being brought up in an emotionally disastrous household, and suffering from what I didn’t realize then was anxiety and depression, as well as possible complex PTSD. It pretty much got me nowhere other than feeling abandoned and alone.
The suffocating feeling was so big I had no idea how to hold it that whenever there was another incident that would cause another overwhelming surge of grief, I would try to get away from it. Pretend, ignore, fantasize. There wasn’t anyone to help me with my grief as a child as those around me were so deep in their grief and most likely assumed since I was a child, I didn’t feel or recognize what was going on.
This was the 80s, and emotional intelligence wasn’t really a thing in my family and Midwest surroundings.
They probably also didn’t realize that I was extremely sensitive and deep into co-dependency even at such a young age…that I was already pretty fucked up in the head and knew it was best just to pretend that everything was ok because I needed to help the adults in my life to feel better. My grief at this point wasn’t affected until after my senior year in high school.
IT WAS THE SUMMER OF 1996…
My grandfather, Teddy Edward, died of a heart attack in bed, deep in the San Fernando Valley, with my grandmother sleeping in a separate bed next to him. While I loved him out of familial duty, I can’t say we were close or that I liked him as he was extremely emotionally and physically abusive to my grandmother. I didn’t grieve over his dying.
So, when my mother-in-law passed in 2014 from complications of a cancerous brain tumor, I was once again struck with the familiar feeling of unexplainable loss, anger, and that not understanding that comes when someone you love dies in what we gauge as “too soon.” This began what I came to think of as the train of deaths within our family.
The following year, my father would succumb to his 15-year battle with dementia. On Christmas morning of 2016, my beautiful grandmother died in the sunroom of our family home, surrounded by those she loved. We got a bit of a reprieve until my sister-in-law lost her battle with cancer at the age of 46, after which my mom was diagnosed with ALS in January 2020 and passed that August.
That is the death that changed me.
My mom. Elizabeth Anne Marth.
I was going to write about support today and how women complain about not having any but will self-abandon by denying it left, right, and center because they are so conditioned that to ask for help is a sign of weakness.
Then, I was sent an article by Cheryl Strayed that was initially published in The Sun in 2002 and later republished in honor of their 50th anniversary. The article is called “The Love of My Life.” In it, Strayed writes of the loss of her mother and her experiences that came after.
It is, in my opinion, a beautifully written piece on the varying emotions and ways we handle grief- as well as how we don’t handle grief on a personal and a societal level (you can check it here).
This article changed my afternoon.
When my mom died, I told her I loved her, and she refused to have a conversation about it. We had been at odds for a few years, and she would not budge and let me in. The last words she said to me were, “You’re going to do this now, Elizabeth, no.” Those words cut me to the core. There is so much backstory here, but it doesn’t match what I want to get across today.
And the realization dawned on me that I had been so obsessed with being okay, with moving on, with not joining the depressing rest of the world who viewed death as an ending (because I was enlightened and saw death for what it was- a transition, the next part of the journey). I didn’t want to be sad or take time to mourn or think about all that had happened in the lifetime that I was Anne’s daughter.
And this abandoning of grief brought what felt like accolades.
Since I was doing well, people seemed to find this healthy, the right way to be. I saw a grief therapist that I wouldn’t come to see as genuinely beneficial until a few years later, who was the only one who explained and accepted my grief. I still denied it so much, however.
Over the years, I have come to notice the various reactions to grief.
Those who call themselves religious can have a similar view as I have had…
“Well, they are with God and happy now,”
meaning if you feel sad, you don’t have the faith that you should…or you wouldn’t feel sad.
Or those who shove down their emotions (yep, been there, too) and pretend they don’t feel anything until they don’t.
Some turn to activities that take away the pain for a bit—like drinking a bit too much (me again).
Or drugs, sex, gambling, etc. And while this is a shortened list, they are all ways of self-abandoning. Self-abandoning our feelings, self-abandoning what we need, self-abandoning our health.
Looking back over the past 4 years, I can see all the different ways I have tried to avoid feeling the grief of my mom.
And the truth is, it still comes. As much as I have tried to run, it has caught up with me.
I am an entirely different person than I was 4 years ago or as a child.
And while I am still comfortable with my grief, I am learning to allow it.
I am learning that as I desire not to self-abandon and help others not to as well, that means allowing my feelings around my mother’s death and other losses I feel so deep to come.
To feel them and then let them flow through me.
Asking God to be with me in the uncomfortableness.
Trusting the feeling will pass and not engulf me.
And it does. It passes.
And the next time it comes, it is a bit less or has a new teaching for me.
Grief is a process, and it is one that we can step into and be healthier for.
There are so many fantastic grief counselors out there, and there are so many excellent books and incredible programs that can help with your grief. Self-abandoning is unnecessary, even though I believe it is a part of the process. I say this on many blogs, but it is very accurate.
If you find yourself in a place where you need support with anything causing you grief, reach out.
There is help to get you through.
The journey out of self-abandonment can be confusing, disorienting, and hard to navigate.
But if you’re ready for a sneak peek into what a personalized journey of support, education, and life-changing tools could look like, especially for YOU, let’s connect with a FREE DISCOVERY CALL today!