Changed By Grief
©Iris J. Arenson-Fuller, PCC, CPC
Yes, it is true that we are forever changed by most of the losses in our lives. Serious loss usually has a permanent impact, but eventually we must make choices about how we want to live out our days.
Have you ever suffered from some type of condition that caused you severe physical pain, perhaps for a long time? I hope not, yet I know some have had the misfortune to experience this in life.
Maybe you attempted different ways of alleviating your pain? You may have worked, along with your doctor, to find the most effective medication to help you. You and your doctor may have tried to arrive at just the right balance of medications to give you some pain relief without causing you to suffer from unpleasant side effects. Or perhaps you found and opted for a mind-body approach or a combo regimen, like meditation, yoga, herbal remedies, etc.?
When you finally (hopefully) discovered whatever it was that helped you begin to feel better and to improve your quality of life, you cautiously started to allow yourself to feel hope and optimism. You might not have felt this way in a long while. It’s not easy to be positive when you hurt all the time, or most of the time.
So one day, after experimenting with various methods, you woke up, and as you moved along with your day, you gradually began to realize that something was different. The pain was feeling a little less sharp or heavy to you. Slowly, tentatively, a small smile began to form on your face. You began to test the waters by carefully extending one leg, putting weight on it, and waiting to see if the searing pain you normally felt in your lower back would take over your brain and close out the possibility of feeling much else that was positive.
Suddenly, you were absolutely jubilant, maybe for just a brief time, but you felt as though a whole new universe had opened up for you. If felt almost as though you had been given a gift you’d forgotten could even exist for you, but which you had observed so many others take for granted.
You knew (and your doctor or helping professional had explained) that this miraculous relief and diminishing of your chronic pain might not be total, and might not be permanent, but it certainly felt incredible and unfamiliar. You knew that this did not mean your condition was cured or extinguished, but only managed. You had forgotten how good management could feel. You were really beginning to enjoy the new state of affairs, even with a nagging fear that the pain could return at any moment. You didn’t want to live with that sword hanging over your head, but you had to acknowledge that it was there. It was at this moment that you made your choice.
As the week and then several weeks passed, your focus on the pain slowly began to recede from the most prominent place in your consciousness. Sure, it was there, and maybe you would get a sharp, stabbing jolt when you undertook a bit too much (because it felt so great not to be limited by the intense pain you had for so very long) but all in all, you realized you were doing well. Little by little, your activities and choices began to not be dictated by your pain. You began to pay attention to the world going on around you, and even to take pleasure in it.
This, my friends, is how it feels when intense grief starts to lift a little, with ever so-much subtlety. You might not even recognize it at first. Your grief may be from a serious loss like a loved one’s death, or a huge dream that has exploded into dust before your eyes and buried your hope under a pile of debris.
Without warning, a small hole in the thick curtain separating you from the world begins to form (Maybe nobody else sees or feels it, but you know it’s there). A small beam of light, fights its way in. You put your hand over your eyes from the shock because it is so unaccustomed for you. Very cautiously, you peek through your fingers a bit to see if the light is there, or if you are imagining it. You have not seen it for so long. You then choose to let it in.
We have all heard, have possibly dismissed, or have even been angered by the cliche that our grief would be “healed” over time”. As one who has had a lot of loss in life, and who has personally traveled the difficult road to healing more than once, I can tell you that we don’t really heal over time. We don’t wake up one day and find that our grey-colored world has turned into an old film that bursts mid-stream into exquisite technicolor.
It is a gradual re-learning to enjoy the things in life that we have mostly forgotten about. It is a gradual strengthening of our ability to begin to feel pleasure, even in the settings that have continued to remind us of our loss and of our pain. The ache of our loss does return sometimes, because we are never completely healed, and we must accept that we are probably forever changed. We are careful still, most of us, about the things and situations to which we expose ourselves. We know that our sadness and grief can be unpredictable, but we finally begin to step out into the life we have been avoiding.
This is a choice, though, for many of us. We can choose to be imprisoned by our misery. Or we can choose to acknowledge that it may never completely go away, but that there are still plenty of things left to enjoy in the world. If we avoid life, if we avoid giving a voice to our sorrow, by pushing it away, the agony of our painful journey will be horribly prolonged.
I received an email once, from some dear former clients who had lost a young daughter, and for whom the agony of her illness and loss had been unbearable. As always, the message communicated their great love for their daughter, adopted as an infant. Yet, there were new things in this message. There was finally good news about other people and things in their lives. There was much love and joy expressed over a grandchild. The mom described a picnic they had recently enjoyed, on a beautiful day by the graveside of their daughter, and how peaceful and lovely it was. I know that their loss will always be with them. How wonderful it was, though, for me to hear how they had moved such a long way on their particularly difficult grief voyage. They had made the choice to honor their daughter by living their lives in the best way they knew how.
Iris Arenson-Fuller, PCC, CPC, is a certified and credentialed Grief and Loss Transformation, Life Redesign Coach who works mostly with midlife and older women. She also founded and directed a non-profit, licensed adoption agency for about 30 years, until she notified the board that it was time to close and focus on her coaching practice and her creative writing. She is a published poet who has written most of her life. She has been coaching professionally since early 2009. Iris has facilitated several groups for widowed women. She also has a personal project of assisting a small group of widows in Kenya and their families, and she raises some modest funds and personally contributes to their ongoing needs.
Iris is energized and inspired by helping people who’ve been through tough times so they can find joy, purpose and success. She loves helping women discover or rediscover their creativity and new meaning, even while taming grief. She can also help you figure how how to become a Pizazz Ager on your own terms, in your own way. Most of her time these days is centered around offering small groups, private one-to-one coaching and creative writing. To learn more about how Iris can help you and how coaching works, set up an appointment to talk on the phone. Contact her on FB or at ir**@vi*******************.com .
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