Without going into too much private detail, in the last three years, I have gone through more grief than I had done in the earlier part of my life in total.
I have never tried to find the meaning in any of the losses I had to storm. I tried just to keep standing straight.
I had to survive multiple deaths, the ends of relationships with several people still alive, and the loneliness of the pandemic.
These last three years have transformed who I am, and if they made any change, they made me at least braver. I really try not to let them make me nihilistic and detached.
I feel like at this point, when I am going through more significant changes in my life, I am ready to reflect at least on some of these transformations I experienced; also, in the future, I might be forced to go through them again.
Denise Levertov wrote a poem titled ‘Talking to Grief’ where he says:
You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes.
So I guess, before the summer ends and the winter comes, I will attempt on naming my grief.
1. Sleep
Grief affected my sleep, and this is as common as sand – according to this article from Psychology Today, grief might change your sleeping pattern, cause insomnia and emotionally inflammatory dreams. When I was going through the worst grief of my life, I couldn’t sleep for days and weeks (honestly, I don’t even remember for how long that lasted).
Somehow, I survived that, and I am sure I will do it again if I have to.
However, lack of sleep can affect your mental health as it is, so if problems with sleep persist, I would personally recommend speaking with a healthcare professional about it. I went through this alone and it was agony. But to be honest, I was mainly too delirious to ask for any help.
2. The pain of things that, in the past, would be celebrated
Holidays and traditions look and taste different, and it might feel like this will be irrevocable.
I strongly believe that in the future, I will build my new traditions, perhaps with a new family. This hope is something that gives me more energy to move forward with my life.
As per this article by New York Times, when holidays come, you should: “Start new rituals. Fill your days with hobbies. Make plans with friends. Brace yourself.”
Accepting that things will never be the same will help, I can promise you that. Also, being intentional seems to be very helpful (according to my own experience and the article I linked): if you decide to eat ice cream in your sweatpants on the day that would normally be spent with a loved one, make it your choice, make it the time you dedicated to do exactly that. The feeling that things just happen to you without your own conscious decision is debilitating, especially when you are already deeply wounded.
3. Don’t feel like you are cheating on a memory
Sometimes enjoying my life felt like cheating.
Considering a new future, the one that you never planned for in the past, when the person you lost was still in your life, might feel like offending the sacred memory of them.
And that applies to both living and dead people, at least in my experience.
Allowing yourself to have hope while being realistic about your current situation is, in my opinion, necessary to cope.
Not surprisingly, this article on the hope theory claims that: ‘Higher hope corresponds with superior academic and athletic performance, greater physical and psychological well-being, and enhanced interpersonal relationships’.
High hope individuals are able to visualise their lives that might strongly differ from their current situations and find strength in it, to not only survive but also transform themselves in a positive way.
I wanted to write this short, self-indulgent note mainly to remind myself that there is still a lot of hope in me. Even if more things in my life collapse, I will find strength in myself to see the future where new memories are built, new experiences felt, and new winds will be striking my back. Running towards something, not from something.
