Conversing with people who refuse to honor our emotional roller-coaster ride can be exhausting! It’s so tiring to hear them say, “You’ve got to move on.” Or, “You have to be strong.” Or how about, “You’re over reacting.” These heartless assaults felt more like abuse than any kind of loving support. I wondered, was it me? And then I began the attack on myself, because I believed if those around me thought I should be ‘over it’ – I ought to be… My heart ached and yearned for a different ending to my fairytale years spent in the form of marriage with Will. How could I move on, or get over it, or stop crying? Of course, I wanted to be pain free. The sensation of having a gorilla gripping my heart with its hand, about to tear it out of my chest, was excruciating. I was ready to let that go! Do others think we enjoy living in the pain? Let them give it a whirl and see how soon they ‘get over it’ were my thoughts on their attacks. Then I recalled being on the outside looking in. I remembered a widow losing her husband, and how she blamed him for making her life so awful because he left her. However, within only a couple of months she had ‘moved on’ and began dating another man. Hmm, I figured she was ‘over it’. But then her actions and outbursts indicated otherwise. I thought to myself, (thank God I hadn’t voiced them) “What is her problem – when is she going to get over it?” Those are the thoughts of inexperience. Because I hadn’t suffered loss, I really had no idea why her behavior, though dating and living it up, was so erratic. Yep, I’m guilty… Twenty years later, life taught me the ropes by putting me in the path of losing a husband. How ashamed I was for having those unsympathetic thoughts those many years ago. Life taught me a hard lesson…it was payback time in a sense. So now, by giving my loss purpose, I educate those who aren’t familiar with significant loss. During a radio interview after publishing my book, No Regrets, My Love, the host incorrectly stated that everyone has lost somebody. I piped up and told him that was untrue, and then explained that I had not encountered it until I lost my husband. He apologized, but truly he was innocent, he just ‘assumed’… So when the unknowing pummeled me with their words of advice due to not understanding I forgave them in my heart, because they truly couldn’t know what I was feeling. I learned to think the words, “Forgive them, for they know not what they say.” It brought my heart peace, allowed me to hurt anyway while sorting through my OWN journey, and helped me to weed out my friend list. So, when others give you mindless advice, without the wisdom required to do so, ignore them and live your grief and journey anyway. We all deal with it in our own way and our own time. And provided we are taking a few steps forward, even if we take one or two back, we are doing the good grief work that will bring us toward sunnier skies further down the path. Live your own authenticity, and one day and you will discover that you have more smiles to smile, laughs to laugh, hugs to hug, trips to take, memories to make, and will look back at the progress you’ve made and call yourself a true warrior! One last tip: You must believe you will…therefore you shall.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 21:00:00 +0000
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