Adding to this wise, compassionate, heartfelt post is my ongoing recommendation for this author’s book — Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief: https://www.amazon.com/Bearing-Unbearable-Love-Heartbreaking-Grief/dp/1614292965. A true gem, and particularly given the grief-phobic culture that we live in.
Bless us all. May we find the courageous, conscious, kind, and compassionate support we need, and support each other, when grief arises — and especially in the awareness that grieving is an inevitable part of life and essential to the experience of what it is to be wholly human. 🙏 Molly
"Aren't you over it yet?"
"Are you still grieving?"
"Don't you think it's time to move on?"
"Just choose happiness."
I was thinking last night about the ways in which people live authentically (or not).
And, I truly believe, and there is science behind this idea that, in grief, not living authentically and inhibiting or suppressing our emotions creates many problems for people, even intergenerationally. Unfortunately, we live in a world ushering us to "get over" our grief.
I realized something very soon after Chey's death in 1994: I had to grieve honestly and cleanly. And that meant, to others, it would be messy, chaotic, and evocative. Few people have the capacity to sit with a wailing mother grieving the death of her beloved baby.
But I just could not pretend to be anyone I wasn't or feel anything I didn't feel. This process taught me to trust myself, very gradually. I trusted that I could learn to live with the grief, to make space for it in my life. I learned that I could remember her with intention, even when it brought many tears. To remember her was now my duty, my way of being her mother.
Oh yes, at first, I resisted. I wanted to heed the misguided advice that "it's time to move on" and believe that someone "had a plan" or that if I focused on my other children, "then everything would be better".
But I knew, unequivocally, this was not my truth.
I could not live a lie.
Grief did not become my most meaningful companion over night, but slowly, slowly, grief and I came to know and understand one another.
25 years later, grief and I don't meet as often anymore. But we still meet. Grief reminds me who I am, who I have been, and who I will always be. For that, I am thankful. I don't wish to cut myself off from my true self. And to forget my child, to pretend as if she never existed, is to fragment, to disconnect from self and other.
To remember her, even though it may come with grief and longing, feels right. So, I will always call her to my heart no matter what anyone else says.
Reclaim what's yours. Grieve honestly. Find your tribe.
And to the emotional airbrushers, get over your need for me to get over my grief.
With love & ahimsa to all grievers out there this January morning,
-Dr. Joanne Cacciatore
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