If there was a time I was stuck in my grief, it was the fall of 2013. In my frustration over lack of progress in multiple areas of my life, I berated myself with unkind thoughts.
I toiled with several simultaneous issues – career, illness, relationships, professional envy. If my self-esteem had been a liquid, it could have been measured in a test tube.
The project to clean out my parents’ home slowed even further as a deafening voice in my head reminded me how long Dad and Mom had been dead. Seven years. Four years.
I wrote in my journal, “Is the house holding me back?”
Have you ever looked at your grief, gauged the progression and come up short?
From the moment of our birth, our lives are measured. The doctors take our weight and our length and put it on a birth certificate. Our parents stand us against a wall and pencil a line and maybe a date. Our height. Our report cards measure our educational progression. Our bosses evaluate our work progression. We look at our bank accounts and 401Ks to check our financial advancement. At church, leaders urge us to go to Bible study to grow spiritually, and when we face a difficult circumstance, we hope our behavior reveals a progression in our faith.
How much should we focus on the progression of our grief? On whether we are “doing better”?
Two things fired up my thinking about progression this past week. First, I updated my social media accounts. I downloaded an up-to-date profile photograph, freshened up my “About Toni” page on my blog and added a page to the site called “Also Writing …” The page is a listing of places to find my writing elsewhere, such as at The Wonder Report. (I hope you’ll check out the new appearance and information.)
As I’ve mentioned previously, my first article appeared at www.thewonderreport.com this month. I’ve been hired as a family and relationship columnist, and I get to tell stories about navigating grief, what I’ve dreamed about doing for a few years. Ah, Progression. I hope you’ll check out the work.
The other event that triggered this post was a visit Saturday to see my mother’s best friend, who lives across the street from my childhood home. The new owners were outside when I drove by, so I stopped, got out of my car, and reintroduced myself. They remembered me, and pointed out their fourth child. The 2-month-old slept in a carrier by the door where my mother always sat.
After checking out his sweet face, I got a first-time, up-close look at the work to renovate the house. They’d torn the ceiling tiles down and torn out a part of the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. It’s a more open plan now. They tore out the wall in the laundry area. The room where my father died will become a laundry and bathroom.
I found myself spontaneously admiring the work. I liked their ideas. I liked their creativity, their ability to see new, wonderful things in a battered, 46-year-old trailer enclosed by conventional walls and a roof. I liked the progression. This old home, which a Realtor once suggested to my horror to tear down, will get a new life.
I was astounded at my own progression. At the progression of my grief. For years, I worked to keep a lot of the stuff inside just as my parents had left it. Now here I was genuinely okay with someone coming in, wiping away my parents’ “fingerprints,” and making it something else.
In the fall of 2013, I had wondered if the job of being around their things was rubbing my wound, causing it not to heal. I did not see progression.
How do we miss progression? Why do we make the hope-killing decision that we’ve taken a wrong turn in our grief?
The changes within us can be very subtle and come very slowly. Grief evolves in a jagged way. Up and down.
I call it a journey, but I don’t mean we should taking out a map constantly and looking for landmarks to take us back to what life was before, nor to the place everyone else thinks we should be emotionally. Actually, the process is more like a meandering road, and we’re on an exploration. Each person will create an individual road, one not exactly like anyone else walked.
This individualized exploration of self, of God and of the relationship with our deceased loved one is often challenged. We reside in a world that urges us to measure, compare and progress.
Resist. Yes, let’s celebrate every small step we take, but also let’s not condemn ourselves as I did for standing still from time to time.
In hindsight, I believe even that period I felt stuck was valuable to my journey. If for no other reason than to sit here now and encourage you to keep hope alive. Believe better days are ahead as you continue to grieve. At some point, you’ll look back and realize you’ve come so far.
You might not be where you want to be now, but can you look back and see some change is perspective, some growth, some healing? If your grief is still too fresh to consider that, can you pinpoint another loss in your life years ago and remember an attitude change or the insertion of new information that helped you get unstuck and move forward?
Copyright © 2019 by Toni Lepeska. All rights reserved. www.tonilepeska.com
Our 1st Valentine’s Secret Power
Great thought to ponder. I had never thought about measuring our grief, but we do. We measure everything. Thanks for sharing.
I guess by looking back we can all see progress in our grief. So, I’m not stuck then. There is hope.
Thanks, Kathleen, for your insight. Sorry for the delay in response – Your message got lost for a bit.
Hi Kathleen,
Your insight into grief was very interesting. I particularly like your use of “meandering “ in the process of grief. One never knows when the tsunami will overwhelm. I was sitting in my kitchen on Sunday morning and noticed a cookery book entitled “One is fun” that my late hubby had bought. It brought the tears again and the what if’s,that haunt me.
My faith and wonderful Christian friends are very supportive but ultimately it is me and God on this journey.