Grief
When people talk about grief, my brain instantly goes to people I know that have passed away. People I have lost due to death. Grieving is a process, just like any other healing process it takes time, and you never really know what is going to trigger that grief. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tend to ever completely go away either. You can be sitting in your car and a song comes on the radio and it reminds you of a certain person that has passed away and before you know it you are sobbing because of how much you miss them. Or you smell a certain scent, and it reminds you of someone you loved that is no longer with you and there’s that bittersweet feeling of remembering them fondly and missing them terribly. It doesn’t really matter if that death happened 2 months, 2 years, or 2 decades ago, that sadness can still be unearthed in you. Grief is universal in that sense. I think most people when they hear grief, think the same thing. It’s Universal, everyone does it, and everyone feels it at some point. The necessity behind grieving the loss of a loved one (Human or I’ll throw in pet as well) that has passed away; the physical loss of a loved being, being gone is widely accepted and treated with compassion. It’s universal.
Not everyone is aware of the grief that comes with the loss of opportunity, relationships, health, security/safety, or happiness/pleasure. Even though everyone experiences the feelings of sadness that come with these types of losses, not everyone understands or accepts that these losses can also entail needing and accepting the grieving process the same as you would if it were the loss of a loved one.
With these types of losses, this type of grief is also the type of grieving that so perfectly goes hand in hand with healing trauma. Part of healing trauma, a good chunk is accepting and allowing yourself to grieve what your trauma took away from you.
The loss of your childhood. If the trauma happened at an early age, most likely the loss of innocence.
The loss of the ability to be comfortable in playing.
The loss of knowing what it feels like to feel safe and secure, with others and within yourself.
The loss of trust in others and in yourself
The loss of memories. I know good things happened in my childhood, those aren’t the things I remember though.
The loss of relationships; either because that relationship had a hand in the trauma, they didn’t believe the trauma or due to the impact of the trauma on our behaviors.
The loss of the ability to feel and manage emotions properly.
The loss of opportunities missed while trying to cope with trauma or while healing trauma.
The loss of learning how to properly treat me.
The loss of the ability to cry when I feel the need to, feel emotions like any human has the right to do.
Just typing that list put a pit in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I am horrible at grieving. I’m no good at most universal truths but anything that involves emotions, especially sadness I tend to think I can survive without, I can’t and I am learning that the hard way. I would never in a million years expect anyone else to not grieve the same things. Being a survivor of many traumatic experiences, I have a well of grief inside me that seems too much to bear most days. The depth of that sadness is excruciatingly overwhelming to even think about, let alone allow it to bubble up and be processed through. The problem there that arises though is that forces one to become functionally numb, if one can’t allow the full impact of the sadness, it’s hard to be engulfed by the whole magnitude of joy. I can still get through the day and be compassionate and loving when I manage to keep my own sadness at bay, but it prevents me from showing up as a whole human.
I strongly desire the ability to show up where ever and with whomever and be able to be a whole human being with the wide range of access to my emotions that being human entails. Everyone deserves to feel like a whole human being. Trauma takes that away. That is why I continue to pursue the therapeutic benefits of healing my trauma with the Footnotes Trauma Foundation, I am still learning how to grieve because trauma took away my ability to do so healthily.
…if one can’t allow the full impact of the sadness, it’s hard to be engulfed by the whole magnitude of joy.