In dire times you can lose joy, but you can’t lose hope. Hope is your guide. – Paulo Coelho
I haven’t written a blog here for a very long time. In fact, the last time I wrote one was shortly after my sister’s funeral last summer, which was also after my mother’s funeral a week earlier. It was a bad summer 2023.
This post is sort of following on from my last one, also about grief but how it affects you months later in ways you might not expect. The start of this year 2024, I had plans. Work plans, life plans, emotional plans etc. However, the universe threw me a curve ball and deep into a work issue that completely took up all my time for a few weeks until February. It was draining. Maybe I needed that distraction.
Since then, life has been odd for me. This time last year I was feeling energetic, knew where I was heading, every day I’d wake and have a goal, a schedule for the week which I adhered to, a list of daily tasks. Life was ok, it was ticking along, until the summer. This year, not so much. In three words: I feel frozen.
What lit me up last year, what drove me and excited me has left the building. It’s all just upped and left. I’m missing deadlines. Got no enthusiasm for something I used to love doing. I wake and have no schedule anymore, I just wing it during the day and tick off my to-do list with sighs of “that’s been done”. My energy levels have dropped. I sit at my desk and what used to be joy and a happy work ethic is now just treading water. I just feel frozen.
I also crave my bed every day I’m awake. My safe place. I lay there on waking and wish it could still be last February when everything was just as it was. Not how it is now. I just feel frozen.
It got me thinking if this is also a symptom of my grief. The thing is, we all have terrible traumas in our lives and it can break us but also wake us and we’re allowed to feel the myriad of emotions from depression to confusion to sudden dramatic lifestyle changes. However, I don’t like the response “well I am who I am now because of what’s happened to me”. It feels a bit like walking around with a placard which says “I have no control. I am a victim”. Yes, we’re all changed by our life traumas and I really empathise and sympathise and offer all my support when I can but, is it ok to use trauma as a crutch which can limit our future happiness?
Some people do just give up which is so sad and they need love. But we have to keep on keeping on. We have to do the best we can. If the best means just getting out of bed and taking a shower and that’s it for the day then that’s amazing. If your best is just sitting in the sun and staring into space letting your mind wander then that’s ok too. These small acts are actually very very big acts that can take a lot of energy if coming from a dark place.
Feeling a loss of self in grief
This feeling of identity loss can manifest in a number of ways during grief. For example, we might feel as though we no longer know who we are or what our purpose is now that our loved one is gone. We might feel as though our sense of self has been shattered…..“When grief makes you lose sight of who you are” https://www.empathy.com/grief/when-grief-makes-you-lose-sight-of-who-you-are
I’m still getting out of bed every day, still showering, still sitting at my desk, working, meeting friends, doing the washing, the driving, the gardening, the bins and everything else that constitutes life like we all have to do every day. Life juggling I call it. But I do, just, feel frozen.
I stand in my shed, looking at the same things that brought me joy and excitement last summer, relating to a work project I do, but the light has gone, it’s just shadows on the shed wall now. I’m still on my Mac, working on another project which brought me fascination and happiness last summer but I do it without the adrenaline pulsating through me now. Additionally, I’m still doing the paperwork for my main job and ticking off my daily list but I’m heavy. And muttering into my ears is frequently is, “what’s happened to you?”
The dreams we have in times like this are weird too.
They sit on my shoulders throughout the day and distract me while I’m trying to work. I had another dream of my mother last night. She was in her younger years and so much happier than usual. We were going on holiday together and we were packing, chatting, laughing, sorting out arrangements with passports and how to get to the airport etc. Which is ironic really as my mother never owned a passport after her divorce when I was a child and never wanted to get on an aeroplane ever again. Another dream I had a few months back was her sitting on the stairs and I was standing at the bottom just pulling faces, cracking stupid jokes and she was crying with laughter at me, head thrown back! These dreams are like a glimpse of a life I wished I’d often had with her, full of happiness and adventure. I wonder why I’m having them of a person who was usually “glass half empty” demeanour rather than “glass half full”.
Anyway, I will keep doing what I do and laughing with my friends and loving my son and revelling in the sunshine on days out. Slowly and hopefully in time the joy and the excitement I once had with work and socialising will creep back into my skin and my spark will return with future plans surging with adrenaline. I’ve been missing that feeling.
We just have to keep on keeping on don’t we? We cannot give up.
How do you all cope with grief? how are you all doing? free virtual hugs below if you need them 🙂 x
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