It’s okay…NOT to be okay. Grappling with my Grief.

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This post is dedicated to anyone who is grieving and feeling the loss of a loved one.

I’m grappling with grief right now.

 

My fellow moms… I recently had to endure the ultimate loss. A month ago (wow it’s already been a month), I lost my mother. You know the one person in life that loves you unconditionally. The person that knows you (sometimes) better than you know yourself. The person who literally gave you life. My beautiful, gracious, loving, one of a kind Marmie (my nickname for her). She had been fighting Lung Cancer for a while and she fought as hard as she could. I watched her bravely go through chemotherapy, drug trials, surgeries, and having to tell her loved ones that there was nothing left to do. Dealing with my mother’s loss has my old feelings of grief coming back for others I’ve lost as well.

Later this year will be twelve years since I lost my father. His loss was different from my mother’s. It was quick and I didn’t see it coming. He had complications from a stroke. I didn’t have time to tell him goodbye. I was a daddy’s girl, and when he left us, I was younger, in my twenties. I wasn’t prepared for grief.

grappling with grief

It doesn’t matter which way I lost my parents, only that I lost them.

It doesn’t feel like it’s been a few weeks, I’ve basically been in a fog. It feels like a bad dream. Grief is different for everyone. You go through different emotions ranging from anger, denial, guilt, depression, etc. People handle it differently, for me I can say I’ve somehow managed to hold it together. I know I’m not alone, I have my daughter, my husband, my sister and the rest of my family. But when you’re grieving it just feels like you’re alone sometimes.
I cry a lot. I’ve been crying everywhere. I cry in the car, the shower, in the aisle at HEB, pretty much anywhere. I just can’t help it.

And what I have learned over the years is that it’s OK.

If I need to cry, scream, hit a pillow or all of the above it’s perfectly OK. Sometimes you have to let it out. I write in my journal and let my feelings out. Grieving takes time and it’s not easy. Most days I don’t know how I’m going to handle it. Conflicting feelings, waves of sadness, guilt about having good days, staying strong for others when I feel broken, it takes a toll. I know I am strong, and I remind myself of that everyday but grief is not something easily pushed aside.

No matter what way you handle grief  just make sure you take care of yourself. There are healthy ways and harmful ways to handle it. My grief is still fresh and painful, but as I already know it will take time for me to be OK. Over the years I’ve lost others: my father, my grandparents, and friends. When it happened and my grief was raw, I was not OK, and that’s OK. I take it one day at a time. 

Right now, I’m not OK… and one day it will be OK. 

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