Does the pain EVER go away?
The topic of pain is so vast and varied as it differs so much for each individual. When we know that little snippet, complications run wild. “Nobody understands me”, “they do not know my pain” and “they do not know what I am going through”.
Although many of us do experience similar feelings about the same things in life when it comes to the pain we feel in loss and grief, we have no clue what it might be like for another person. Grief can consume us and seem overwhelming to a point of unbearable. We may at times find it hard to concentrate on anything else. Advice from friends is welcomed though often times tough to hear “get over it”, “it is time to move on”, “do an activity and get your mind off it”.
Though the people in our lives mean well and wish to see us back at the top of our game, they may not understand what or how we actually feel and so the advice can kind of go in one ear and out the other. Yes indeed, we do not want to hear it.
So how or what can we do to ease our troubled mind, our emotional turmoil?
Just to remind you at this point that I have zero academic qualifications to speak to you about therapy type stuff. I am a man who has experienced tough loss of my children in life and have worked very hard to find peace within myself. My grief is real and my qualifications come by way of first hand experience and not anything I had to learn from a book or by listening to others and researching.
That being said I wanted to share some little ideas today as I am fully aware that the holiday season can be extra tough when we find ourselves bereaved.
Some people will suggest to us that we change our friends if the advice continues to seem a touch too harsh. Others may suggest to us to refrain from certain activities if they remind us too much of our loved one whom we have lost. And there may come a time when we even cannot gel with our own life partner. What is it we must do? Make complete changes to our entire life to get over these pains?
Not exactly is the good news. We possess the ability to feel different things and think different things and for these reasons we do also have the ability to feel better in an absolutely “shitty” situation.
Of course this may require a little energy on our part and often times we will feel like we do not have the energy.
I took the lessons of my son’s deaths as a lesson. Two different lessons, two lessons of WTF. Both incidents were tragic and shattered my heart and my manlihood or humanhood if there is such a word, both shattered me to pieces. Where did the lessons come from? What actual good could come out of feeling what I feel and how I wish to be celebratimg Christmas with all of my children?
For these reasons I found that writing posts like this one offered a helping word to others who are suffering and struggling to cope at this very moment. My sons have given me a voice to offer help to others who find grief overwhelming. My sons have given to me the opening to my inner self and how I feel and think, think of it like my emotional self was stretched so thin and I felt so pulled apart that my deep hurtful emotions had to have a ying to their yang. There had to be some grain of good come from all of this and so I searched for it within myself.
The ying to the yang of it all came about when i began to realise that nothing outside of me could make me think or feel any particular way. Nothing outside of me could make my children come back to life and nothing outside of me could take away the pain.
The job, the real dirty work had to begin from my inside, from inside of me to the outside world and not the other way around.
How can this help you right now in your pain?
Christmas time can be a difficult time in a grief journey, I am here to tell you that it will not always be like this and that there are subtle ways in which you can begin to find comfort. Knowing that nothing outside of myself could help bring about the changes that I needed or required though subtle changes brought about the self care and “work on self”.
No, no absolutely not a big ordeal to undertake, simply finding the fun, the joy and the beauty in places, people and situations. When I began to understand that the only thing I could do is make slight alterations to how I view things and people was the route and I began on the journey to bring about an easing to emotional pains.
The understanding of self is much easier than it sounds. A lot easier to begin doing than it is even to explain here. In short, I guess would be to say “When we change the way we look at things ~ The things we look at change”.
So it is inside of me where the hurt lies, it is inside of me where the thoughts come from, though I may be triggered by an outside of myself influence or stimulus. It is entirely my choice and my decision how I respond as the response is coming from inside of me. I do have strength and power over me and my decisions and my actions. I have strength and power over what I allow to “trigger” or affect me.
I hear you ask,
What about the feelings of grief that come out of nowhwere and steam roll me?
These are simply feelings. I am not saying you will stop having them, what I am saying is that when we begin to see that it is within our own capabilities to straighten out our feelings and process them, then it is within our own capabilities to find our own level of comfort and our own peace. It is not from outside of ourselves. The answers are found within.
I do also understand that you may have read this far and are still not convinced and wish to hit the keyboard and scream at the screen as the pain can be extremely difficult to deal with and an answer is what we seek. For this reason I recommend my own book on the matter titled
Layman’s Handbook in life,
Subtitled
Simple tools to change how we live.
This is not a manual nor a complete guudebook. It is a handbook to flick through and pick up and read any time. A few pages here or there. I simply jotted down the tools and tricks I found very useful to come to terms with losing both of my sons over a three year period. My 1st son died of what they call sudden death. Basically he did not wake up for school one morning at the ripe age of 15. Completely healthy and without any warning signs. My second son a few years later died of a drowning accident. He was 1 and half yrs old at the time. Both tragic and both equally as shocking. Both occasions I watched as my sons were lowered into their graves.
I mention these to highlight to you that I am still here and I am still spreading the good word of how life is beautiful once we begin looking for the beauty.
And of course I do understand how it may not seem too beautiful to you right now. I wish you to trust in the process and the journey and know I too wished my pain to just go away.
If anything is to be said clearly of today, I live with my grief now. I live with my pains. Some days are much easier than others and I encourage any of you to look inside and find that beautiful outlook that you were born with.
Happy holidays to all religious beliefs.
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