Fruit bowl: dealing with pain and grief

[Donte]

The other day as a song unexpectedly popped up on the radio, I found myself overwhelmed by myriads of emotions. Memories of my late partner and the years we had together flooded my mind. Tears started rolling uninvitedly on my cheeks.

It's funny how grief raises her head out of the blue, even years later, when you have come to terms with the loss, the permanency, the death of your loved one.

As I was standing there, my eye caught the fruit bowl on my kitchen bench. I looked at the bananas, pears, apples, mandarins etc. in the bowl. I realised that a few looked a bit off. Some were starting to rot. Instinctively, I wanted to remove them from the bowl, but something stopped me. I decided to take a few steps backwards. Then had another look.

Suddenly, a smile appeared on my face.

'This bowl is my life!', I thought to myself. There are amazing things in it. My daughter, my friendships, work, home, pets, family and relatives overseas, all the material things and hobbies I enjoy. There are also some bad things, pain, loss, issues, problems, challenges that are affecting me. But when I take a few steps backwards, and look at the whole bowl in its entirety, it's actually beautiful and pleasant. There are in it things that I love and give me pleasure and joy.

This thought made me feel better and I found myself remembering the good things and feeling thankful for my life and my countless blessings.

How do you deal with pain? Problems? Issues? Grief? Is there a particular way that you've learnt to see things through your cultural or religious background? Through your upbringing? How do you see your uncomfortable challenges in life? How do you normalise loss and carry on? what's your experience?

[quirkywords]

Donte

What a great post and a wonderful imagery.

In my culture, everything is solved with food. I would not admire the fruit bowl I would eat all the fruit.

Food from chicken soup to help when you are sick or unhappy, to home made bread to wonderful dips and salads.

In my culture we either over dramatise our problems or play them down nothing in between.

I was taught that there is always someone a lot worse off so don't complain but count your blessings.

I suppose I make comfort food when I feel pain.

Thanks for the questions.

Quirky

[Donte]

I remember while growing up, my parents used to have the serenity prayer on a wall in our lounge room translated into Greek and knitted by my grandmother who had given it to them after my grandfather died due to his alcoholism.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." The Seventh-day Adventists in Greece were facilitating peer support meetings for alcoholics and family support groups which grandma attended religiously as she was trying to cope with the violence and abuse she was subjected to by my alcoholic grandfather.

Growing up I could never understand why would anyone ask this of God. Why accept the things you hate? Why keep up with the things that hurt you?

Later on, as I got older I started understanding the skill of learning to accept those things that cannot be changed. I often think nowadays that everything is perfectly as it should be. But for years I struggled with this notion, until I reached the point of understanding that what 'should be' is always 'what is'. In other words, there are really no 'should's' in the world, only what is. The 'should's' are fantasies, large and small, and are not reality - they do not exist.

Most often when we experience distress in life it's because we consistently and rigidly refuse to accept reality, or 'what is', and demand that it be something different. You refuse to accept that your loved one is not mentally stable, no matter how much you insist that he/she be so. Or you refuse to accept the body you were born with and keep trying to change it, hide it, or create the illusion that is different from what it is.

You may be thinking, 'Yes, but isn't there something to be said for being dissatisfied with the status quo and reaching for something higher?' We first have t accept everything about reality before we even consider making a change. For example, you must accept first that your loved one does not naturally have the skills to manage his/her mental health and may even have a resistance to learning such skills. Perhaps in the future he/she may acquire these skills, but the present moment requires you to accept where he/she is, for only then will you be able to see the opportunities to truly help him/her to acquire the skills, and perhaps the desire, to manage his/her mental health more effectively.

[Elizabeth CP]

I think you are right about learning to accept the things we can't change. No amount of ranting & raving will change what has already occured. My husband was really angry & upset when he became blind but it was only after he accepted that it wasn't going to change he could move on & learn to live with it.

Acceptance is about accepting reality but then working out how to deal with it most effectively. After an injury I tried to push myself to do things only to find myself struggling to move because of pain & exhaustion. Once I accepted the reality I came up with a plan to go for very short walks & slowly increase the distance until I'd regained the strength & endurance I needed to function.

In contrast I read a book some time ago recommending we allow time to wallow in our grief or hurts. I'm not explaining it as well as the author but the idea was that by trying to stop ourselves thinking about the things which upset us we don't give ourselves chance to deal with the hurt or pain. Instead accepting our feelings as being real & valid allows us to move forward.

[Donte]

I think you are right Elizabeth.

I remember for decades not accepting that I was unwanted. That my mother wanted to abort me and was unsuccessful despite her numerous attempts.

I remember having huge difficulty accepting that i was a mistake and an accident (condom broke and I was born - mum 18, dad in the army).

Growing up I had huge acceptance issues knowing that I am a homosexual. Didn't really want to be and neither did I ask for it.

That lack of acceptance led me to live a life of shame, guilt, lies and internal turmoil. I was a fake. And I ruined not only my life but also my wife's and to an extent my child's as well.

Then after my divorce, when I became bankrupt and lost millions of dollars worth of properties, I couldn't accept that it was my own stupidity and recklessness that led me to the financial destruction I faced.

After I got infected with HIV from my partner, I lived in denial for a decade. pretending I didn't have a terminal illness and that there was no way my beloved lover and partner could do this to me (head stuck in the sand).

After his death of AIDS five years ago, I'm still struggling to accept that he didn't love me enough to care, to look after me, to fight for me and our love, to look after himself, to want to live, to keep taking his meds and to not want to die. It's been unfathomable to accept that my love for him, with all the personal sacrifices and costs, meant absolutely nothing. And yet, he didn't care less. he stopped his medications and died six months later in intensive care 33 kilos.

Very hard for me to accept that love is nothing and means nothing and you can never save anybody. It's just an illusion. And I have destroyed my life and my health in the process.

But hey, ce' la vie as the French say.

[Donte]

Hello Quirkywords,

Thank you for posting in this thread.

This topic of course is not about food, but rather an analogy of our life and the various aspects in it that make it what it is. The fruit bowl just happened to instigate a thought process in my mind and thought I'd share it in here.

Food however is indeed important to all human beings. If we don't eat we die. I do not know of any culture that does not value food and eating. So thank you for bringing up this subject of eating and particularly comfort eating or emotional eating.

I am glad that you have found comfort in food. Many people are emotional eaters. Food is necessary, however, it can become an addiction and contribute to numerous health issues such as obesity, diabetes etc which are plentiful in our western cultures.

Anorexia, bulimia and other food-related mental health illnesses are very serious and need medical intervention.

I understand that this is not the point you were making but thought it's a great opportunity to explore this serious issue of over-eating, eating the wrong types of foods, and trying to medicate through food.

It could be that we try to replace human connection, relationships etc with eating, just to cover up the pain, to escape, to soothe our wounds and feel better, to not feel the emptiness. It is a double-edged sword for sure and like all things needs to be kept at bay or it can easily get out of hand.

Just out of curiosity, are people in your culture mostly obese? I know of certain cultures where the bigger the person (especially women), the 'happier' they are perceived to be and if someone's skinny they looked upon as unhappy, miserable individuals with lots of problems and bad luck/misfortunes. These cultural attitudes contribute to high mortality rates/co-morbidities and complex health problems in those particular cultures where the lifespan is overall much lower than the rest of the population.

I find it interesting how cultural notions of happiness, joy, comfort, success and fulfillment etc can lead to severe health issues and early death.

In certain cultural groups it would be much harder to talk about emotions, depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses which need treatment and will not go away no matter how much the person eats.

Wondering what approach to take when tackling lifestyle choices based on cultural traditions and belief systems that go back generations...

[Donte]

Hello Elizabeth,

I am sorry to hear about your husband's blindness. I often think to myself how horrible it must be if I turned blind one day. Not able to drive anymore and lose so much of my cherished independence and having to rely on others for my care and basic things would be very upsetting.

It must have been very hard for you too as a partner to have to become a carer. You must be missing the time when you were a partner and not a nurse.

It is absolutely necessary and very important, I believe, for our recovery mindset to grieve our losses. To express this grief. To talk about it and do whatever we can to feel the pain as this brings us eventually to a point of normalizing it and accepting it (if not fully, as somethings can never become fully accepted, at least find some level of comfort and be able to function with our compromised health).

I come from a background where people traditionally wouldn't talk about the loss, the illness or the tragedy. All was hash hash and under the carpet. Fear, lack of education, stigma, superstition coupled with pride and ego and mingled with distorted religious beliefs made it almost impossible for someone to freely express their loss. People would made the sign of the cross and spit three times, together with other terrible and stupid superstitions, avoid interaction, not only with the ill person, but also with the whole family, and make the person feel ostracised. Many wouldn't even attend a funeral out of fear that the bad luck would follow them. (This is where the custom of breaking plates during a celebration, a wedding and a happy event started: people would smash plates to scare away the evil and break the bad luck that would otherwise come and snatch away their joy.)

Ludicrous, I know. And yet, thousands of years of superstition and traditions still find their way through to our modern, educated, and 'civilised' culture and people still carry little 'evil eyes' around and practise certain nonsensical rituals.

Hope the age of reason, logic and technology to help us free ourselves from fear and free us up to be able to feel again. To express. To engage. To start living again.

[Jigsaw9]

Donte

Excellent analogy regarding the fruit bowl. Just wanted to bring up another point that we choose what kind of fruit we want to be. You can be something rare or something among the common folk. We must take advantage when we are ripe and we must hope to be looked after when we are rotting. We can either choose to be eaten up by this world, or choose to leave seeds for the next generation. Everyone should have a goal of leaving a legacy behind. Something people will remember you by.

Something as simple as advising people on these forums is a good start. Use any skills/experience/knowledge you have for the betterment of generations to come. This way you are not a slice of watermelon that gets eaten then forgotten. You are one that left seeds behind that made more watermelons and so on.

[Donte]

Thank you Jigsaw9,

That's a beautiful thought.

Initially I was thinking that the fruit bowl is our life and every fruit in it is an aspect of our lives. But as the conversation unravels it's great to see the different points that come across and various interpretations.

This is the beauty of sharing. 🙂

Our conversation reminded me of my parents who are believers and growing up they would always talk about the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Of course we don't need to believe in a god to experience these attributes. As an atheist, I believe in this fruit as well. I think it links very well with our recovery journey no matter what background or belief system one has. And this is the greatest legacy. X

[Jigsaw9]

We should always look at things from different angles. We constantly limit ourself by seeing things from our perspective only. We shouldn't do this. We need to take a birds eye view and see whats going on outside the box in order to understand the situation inside it. Hope that makes sense???