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 😞 

[white knight]

Hi Eagle Ray,

Your sad life of tragedy is hard to be positive about. However, being the motivator I am I see there is something there to grab on to, that being experience. Your knowledge from your past and ongoing journey has already been felt in these pages from what I've read, excellent replies to people with need, I read one only last night.

Here we all have a story and share them with each other but there is a much wider unknown audience that google our topics and are led here where replies like yours are digested to result in helping others. Isn't that why we are here in life? to help others?

Regardless I have a few links that might help.

https://forums.beyondblue.org.au/t5/grief-and-loss/coping-with-grief/td-p/269738

https://forums.beyondblue.org.au/t5/depression/depression-and-the-timing-of-motivation/m-p/149718/hi...

TonyWK

[Eagle Ray]

Dear Tony,

Thank you so much for your incredibly kind response. I read the links to your other posts too and they are so helpful, especially the one about how you have handled your own experiences of grief which made me cry. That really helps me in finding a way forward. But the one on depression and being gentle on ourselves is also exactly what I needed to here.

 I was doing better this afternoon and then fell into another low point, so reading your post was exactly what I needed.

I’m experiencing a strange kind of depression I haven’t experienced before. I’ve always been more prone to anxiety, but it’s like my brain chemicals have gone haywire in response to overwhelm from so many things over the past 8 years now, and it’s like it’s all really catching up with me. I’ve had a lifelong adaptive response of perseverance which I honestly think started at my difficult birth. It’s like that was where my tenacity for survival began. My Dad had a similar beginning and tenacity was core to his personality too.

I feel like this adaptive response has now been stripped away and I’m trying to find a new mode of adaptation. I feel like I’ve lost my identity. Previously I’ve had one based on the jobs I’ve done, my uni studies, my creative interests etc. But it’s like it’s all just gone and I’m not sure who I am anymore. I’ve never really felt this lost. But I try to trust that this is the transformative fire in which I build a new self.

 I’m wondering if I actually need medication for depression which I’ve not had before. I’m speaking with my psych tomorrow which I’m sure will help.

Thank you again for your kindness 🙏

[ecomama]

Dear Eagle Ray, 

"But I (try to) trust that this is the transformative fire in which I build a new self."

It is. 

Cry when you need to. 
Hold your own hands when you need to. 
I'm so grateful you're reaching out here so much because WE LOVE YOU being here with us. 

There is no way on this earth that you went through all this for nothing. Or worse, to get worse. 
NO. You can turn this around and you will if you want to. 

I heard tonight (not my words but they make sense to me)... people who had easy childhoods grew up to be weak adults, whereas people who had hard childhoods grew up strong. Tony Robbins. 

We NOW have the opportunity to USE every event of our past to cement us in our present. 
We have the ability to turn every negative into a compassionate positive for OUR lives. 

You're already doing this! 
The compassion you CAN show others here is because you have experienced tough times and way more than that, LOVE enough to bring this to the world. 

I am 100% certain that you will attain wonderful physical and mental health. 

Bringing yourself into the PRESENT and know that the past cannot hurt you. 
The future is what you will create. 
Today you can rest as you've done all you can today. Or maybe you'll go and meditate lol! 

Love EMxxxx

[Eagle Ray]

Thank you so much EM. I’m doing my best to trust. I’m honestly genuinely scared at the moment as I’m not used to feeling like I am right now. I did spend time by a lake this afternoon and I wouldn’t say I meditated but it helped.

 I really feel it’s total overwhelm and parts of me have shut down because they literally can’t stay online. It’s like a built in safety mechanism saying stopping everything is your only option.

 I still managed to make and eat dinner but I’m kind of just going through the motions. I’m experiencing deep sorrow.

The main thing helping me in the last few days is nature as usual. I watched a pigeon and a lizard happily hang out in my garden today, the pigeon finding things to eat while the lizard was sun baking. They were right next to each other. It was cute and nice they weren’t the slightest bit perturbed by one another.

Thanks again for your kind thoughts EM xxxx

[ecomama]

Hey ER

SEE What happened when you were living in the moment in Nature? 
You felt the sparklings and tinglings of PEACE with you! 

Can you feel that? 
It's FAN freaking TASTIC it really is. 

Now place THIS feeling in whatever you do. 
When the past creeps in (because it's habit atm) then we can say, "thankyou but I'm good" and let it pass. 
Then thoughtfully bring yourself back to your moment. 

Sure I get fear and I'm sure everyone here does! Dr Joe says that people often allow their default mechanisms of fear because it's familiar and they'd RATHER the familiar than going into the UNKNOWN. 

Fear is evaporated with GRATITUDE! 

The unknown is the BEAUTIFUL FUTURE YOU ARE CREATING NOW. 

The moments in Nature when you FEEL your bliss lol, is what is healing you right now. 

LOVE EMxxxx

[Eagle Ray]

Thanks EM,

Sensory things in nature like the feeling of the breeze off the ocean or the sound of a particular bird are like a lifeline at the moment because, yes, they bring me back to the present moment. I do practice gratitude meditations. I would not say I’m allowing fear. It’s just intrusively pushing through along with deep sorrow and grief. It is a grief for watching the loved ones I’ve cared about die the way they did. I cannot just replace that with bliss. I’m needing to organically process everything I’ve been through and what loved ones have been through. I’m dealing with multiple layers of loss spanning over years and even the psychic loss of my mother following birth trauma and separation. My deepest pain was seeing how my mother died, after all the work she did to heal despite everything that happened to her and the extent to which we had done healing work together, then seeing that dissolve as she disintegrated into death. I am so broken.

 I have always had hope in the past. My strongest trait has been perseverance. That adaptation has kept me alive, literally from birth. But it’s also meant continual hypervigilance my whole life, to keep going, finding answers, solving the next crisis. In recent years I’ve been rushing to hospitals because of the latest medical emergency of a loved one, caring for another in a mental health crisis, doing the daily care work required for someone in increasing stages of disability who can no longer care for themselves, being the solid rock for everyone else. I can’t persevere anymore. I’m struggling just to keep myself going. I have to collapse in this heap and go through the grief and feel the darkness, otherwise the darkness will consume me.

I’ve realised relentless positivity has been the way I have tried to block pain my whole life. But that this has actually been maladaptive. In so many family photos I am the only one smiling. I don’t want to lose my optimism, but I’m realising light and dark have to co-exist and darkness has to be recognised and tended to and allowed ‘to be’, otherwise it will grow in unhealthy ways. So I am having to tend to the darkness, the pain, the wounds in order to heal. It is only being present with this with gentleness that will enable me to move forward.

X ER

[ecomama]

Dear Eagle Ray, 

I understand what you're saying to the extent I can via a forum medium. 

I didn't want to hark back to extremely similar events to you, that I've also experienced, because I have. 
I'm sure not exactly because that would mean YOU are me lol. 

I remember after the passing of a loved one, people would say all sorts to me, like 'would they want you to be sad for this long? etc"... 
Grief was a constant companion for the longest time. It showed a love between us that meant a life well lived to me. 

I know now that the "living", being the people who were living a whole hearted life, experienced grief also of course. But during my dark times and in between theirs, they were beckoning me to come join them. 

It IS a thing so many of us want to sift through to place somewhere in our minds where it's not so traumatic. 
My mother literally cried almost every day, at least every week for hours to me from my age of 3yo until I went NC decades later, over the passing of my brother at a young age. She would say to OTHER people grieving that losing someone you love is like cutting off your arm, now you have to learn to live without that arm. 

While reflecting on my post to you, I now realise I think the opposite in a way. 
That the passing of that loved one FILLS me up with love and gratitude for them! 
I am FULL and WHOLE because of the beautiful (sometimes NOT so nice) family relationships I was fortunate to have been Blessed with. 

I can appreciate the YANG with detachment now, it's over THERE until the next time. 
I want to live in the YIN, so I choose to and so it is. 

I know for one my grandmothers would be horrified if they thought I was in despair over the loss of them. 
I found a ton of healing by reading "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying". I appreciated reading this very much about 30y ago lol. All of my children have read it in the past few years and perhaps there was a some relief found in those words for them too. 

Love EMxxxx

[Eagle Ray]

Thanks EM 🙏 I really appreciate your input. I can very much relate to the experience of having a mother crying (almost) every day.

What you describe about those who’ve passed beckoning to come and join you is like the legacy my grandmother left my mother. My mother fought it so hard, but the heartbreak for me was seeing her finally destroyed by a similar energy. I’d managed to draw her away from that and there was HOPE. But it was lost again.

At the age of 10 I assertively stated to my family including my grandmother that I was “going to live to 100”. Even then I was defying my grandmother’s heavy, depressive energy. I remember her replying “Are you now?”.

It is not my nature to go down the same path. But what I’ve realised is that grief, like life and death, are like the rising and falling tides, the changing seasons, the ever changing weather. I’m needing to allow that process of feeling rising grief and then letting it go. It’s very organic like nature. It is nature playing out through me. This is probably part of why I’m so drawn to go into nature, to let myself feel such processes.

 My mother was severely broken at the time of her mother’s suicide, but she showed incredible bravery in surmounting the obstacles life threw at her over the 25 years she had after that point. With each generation it can get better and I know my path is not my mother’s, and she wouldn’t want that. She once said “Do as I say, don’t do as I do”. She was at times incredibly cruel to me, while other times being kind. I could see her true spirit was gentleness and kindness.

I’ve never read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, but I think I would like it and find it interesting and helpful.

Thanks again EM. Love ER xxxx

[ecomama]

Dear Eagle Ray, I think you'd love that book with your depth of experience. I hope by reading it you'd be comforted as I have been.

Yes the ebb and floe of grief. For over 30y since my Nana passed at times first thing in the morning I would JUMP out of bed thinking "I haven't taken the babies to meet Nana yet!" only to realise she'd passed over, then feel it in my soul. This is fading. At the beginning it was every day, then every week. She'd even spent months towards the end knitting & sewing for my next children. Holding those things made with LOVE omg. 
The day she passed I "saw her" flying so freely above me, saying "I'm free! I'm WELL! I'm happy!" over and over again, I just cried & said "I know Nana and I'm so happy for you and SO SAD YOU'VE gone" and she repeated to me over & over again. 
My heart was broken. 

I meant the LIVING were beckoning to me, not the ones who'd passed over BUT that's a near death experience I can share later lol. 

In the meantime since my last post, I realised I was not being fair to you by not disclosing things about my life that I know you will relate to. I apologise & hope you'll forgive me. 

I'll try to list pertinent points around my birth. Mother had had electric shock treatment a year or so before she was "forced" to live overseas as a Missionary by my considerably older father. The physicians told her never to have children. My father thought he was God or similar, so removed her from all that, took her to live in a Country at WAR no less. Terrible things happening. 
Anyway she KNEW my father only wanted a son. So at my birth he wasn't there. Foreign land. Distressing time around my birth. She was pregnant being a Theatre Nurse in operating theatres on the most vulnerable of patients blown apart in the combat. They could only come in via elephant. Land mines etc. 

They couldn't name me. I wasn't a boy. long story there too by how they came to name me hmm. 

She didn't bond with me, neither did absent father. 
Nannies tried but were sacked if they held me. There's a lot more but suffice to say that's enough for now.

I was taken back to my birth by a hypnotherapist. When retelling, my mother left to vomit. 
I KNEW. Now she knew I could remember. 

So I understand some of your experiences as much I can, given my own. 
Love EMxxxx