Complicated grief

[Eagle Ray]

Hi, I’m wondering how others have gone with complicated grief?

 I’m still struggling in particular with my Mum’s death. She came from an abusive childhood. Her mother committed suicide years later. She didn’t bond with me after a difficult birth. Both my parents had complex trauma and not surprisingly I ended up with it. I became like Mum’s parent aged 5. Her brothers bullied her but she kept trying to love them in the hope of something in return. There’s too much to explain here, but she died utterly broken-hearted and I saw it happen as I cared for her through her physical and mental health decline, as I did for Dad who had a degenerative disease. In the same time period I lost 3 friends to suicide. I was also caring for another family member in breakdown.

Sometimes I just feel so broken by everything now I don’t know what the point of my life is anymore. I fluctuate between hope and a feeling that is beyond exhaustion. I worked so hard to lift Mum to a better place and it was working for both her and me in that our relationship improved and there was hope. Then another family member became angry with her and she spiraled downwards. Then her heart failed. I felt like the obstacles we’d overcome in our relationship and the love and hope that gave was smashed to pieces.

Just before that I was diagnosed with a ‘progressive’ autoimmune disease. I put that in quotes as I’m trying to defy the medical diagnosis with my own research and efforts to improve my health. But I’ve also probably lost the uni degree I was trying to finish and can give nothing more to it.

I’ve had to fight my way back from nothing several times as a result of health issues including extreme chronic pain over years at a time, where I’ve had to stop work, lose all my savings and then start again from zero. I’ve fought my way back from every crisis, reinvented my life to work and function again, but feel like I can’t keep lifting myself up now.

Just totally lost at the moment. I have some kind friends and extended family members and a good psychologist. I’m normally a glass half full optimist, but feel things are on top of me. I feel like grief is beating me despite my best efforts to heal. Sorry ranting now, but lost. Just feeling really down tonight 😞 

[Eagle Ray]

Hi EM,

Sorry, I misread your sentence thinking you were saying the dead were beckoning you. Glad you had the LIVING doing it.

You don’t need to apologise about sharing experiences. There are some similar things in there to my own family history, including the electric shock treatment, war experiences etc. I’ve been reading books by Gabor Mate, a physician who has specialised in the areas of trauma and addiction. He writes and speaks about being a Jewish baby born in the time of the Holocaust and the impact that had on his mother and him as an infant. Your story reminded me of that and the way contextual circumstances can shape our early life.

That sounds like a powerful experience with the hypnotist and your birth. It’s interesting your mother leaving to vomit. There’s nothing as telling as visceral responses in the body to tell us what’s going on. With certain grief coming up while meditating and allowing repressed emotions to rise, I have vomited also. The body is trying to rid itself of stuff that it’s stored away.

A week ago I essentially relived my birth experience through procedural body memory and then was confronted with the abandonment I experienced afterwards. I think that had a lot to do with the slump I was in. I realised my very strong personality trait of perseverance came from fighting to live as a baby. It was very useful survival-wise initially, but I’ve realised the need to relinquish it somewhat, as we are not meant to be in a hyper-alert survival response our whole lives (and I pretty much have been). As I’ve been letting that go the grief for my child self has really hit, compounding other grief I was already processing. But these feel like realisations I had to have to progress forwards in a more healthy way. My nervous system is learning a new way of being. It’s quite a journey.

It’s interesting what you say about them wanting you to be a boy. My Mum had trouble accepting me as a girl and dressed me in boy clothes. Hand me down dresses from relatives were kept in her cupboard in a separate bag. I rarely got to see them let alone wear them. I was often mistaken to be a boy which was humiliating. It was another thing to contend with in a confusing childhood.

But I’ve got through and I’m still here and so are you! That’s beautiful about your nanna flying free. Have you heard of Anita Moorjani’s book ‘Dying to be Me’ about or NDE? X ER

[ecomama]

Hey ER, perhaps being born in a Buddhist country (with Christian Missionary parents mind you lol) has helped me. 

I had zero negative emotions about my birth experience.
In fact it aligned with the TRUTH I felt throughout my life up till the moment of hypnotherapy. I was relieved! 
Like the relief someone feels the MOMENT they were being gaslighted. Those intuitions of "something not quite right" with how the abuser was treating us, at the moment of TRUTH ahhh it all melted instantly "I'm not crazy". 

Both of my brothers were born with disabilities. Father was NOT happy but who cares lol. He left us for a woman with 2 sons. That confirmed by beliefs at the time. This spurned a passion for my life which became my career for over 40y & counting lol. 
Again that was ALL on him and zero about me. Useless irresponsible reckless person he was. He's passed so I'm all good. 

Loved Gabor Mate's work. 

Lol I dressed MYSELF as a boy! I even cut my own hair off really short lol. When people called me a boy, I was delighted as though I could trick anyone into thinking I was, even perhaps my FATHER hahaha. 
Even my high school friends called me Super Hermaphrodite, affectionately of course lol. Muscles like Thor!

That abruptly stopped when they found cancer in my cervix before I had children. 
Then again in my breasts after my first batch of babies. 
THEN again after my 2nd batch of babies. 
EACH time in between & during, I was confronted with major personal crises in my life and had to "muscle up". 

I can't count the Court cases I've been dragged into by greedy people wanting what is MINE alone. And the rest. 

And if I didn't get the message THEN, I sure do now. Broken back & other injuries that the only prognosis was a wheelchair. So off to the next GP = wheelchair. Pffft duck that! 

I'm GREAT! Lol. Climb trees with a chainsaw to lop branches still. Move heavy wheelbarrows full of even bricks lol. Work full time, "do" the household full of gorgeous munchkins lol. 

100% a journey, 
Love EM