Something About Resisting Grief
I want to share a little bit about grief and grieving. I am working on a longer post - but it still needs some work and feels like it needs something. But for now I wanted to share an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the book I’ve been working on The Anxiety Languages: 5 secret ways your anxiety is speaking to you and trying to guide you back to Joy.
For many of us when we see the term grief or grieving we immediately think of the period of time after the passing of a loved one. After all grief is heavy, all encompassing, it is a sea that takes you under and usually spits you out a different person. I’ve known that grief - it takes grip of your soul and turns your reality sideways. Even when you think you can swim through any storm - somehow the passing of a loved one still pulls you under until you surrender to being pulled to the deep dark waters of your aching soul.
When you are experiencing death, your ego/mind will use the “shipwrecks” or past traumas/ unexpressed emotions/limiting beliefs you thought you buried to justify or resist the change. But what happens when we resist the emotions, deny the waves of change, and try to turn off the heartbreak of our emotions?
In the last six years, I have experienced and lived through so many challenges, sadness, and life transitions. The below passage takes you back to excruciating moments when I resisted my grief and fought my emotions. This process led to my emotional breaking point (internal emotional & spiritual death) in 2020.
“In 2017, while I was a junior in college - keeping my grades up, landing dope internships, and leading organizations at my small western Pennsylvania university, I got pregnant with my now 5-year-old daughter with my best friend and partner at the time. I was so ashamed of myself and hated myself for already failing my unborn child because I did not think I was prepared to be a mom, and I wanted the best for this little soul. It started a series of VERY intense and often negative interactions with my mother. My experiences triggered her own trauma by proxy, which brought us to a period where we did not speak for two weeks after telling her I was pregnant. This event is what started the slow degradation of my past emotional bandwidth.
My family came around and was immensely supportive and loving to me and my daughter (Scarlett). But the world was not - as some people in my community found out about my pregnancy, I received horrible comments. Here are some of my personal favorites:
"Wow. Your parents must be so disappointed in you."
"OH! I'm so sad for you. You had so much potential!"
"Were you assaulted? No? Because I didn't think you were that kind of girl."
Fun Fact: all these comments were made by other women - mothers who, before this point, thought very highly of me and whom I considered to be close to them and their children. This period of self-hatred and fear of interacting with others because of the comments I received pushed me deep inside myself, and to cope, I hid behind indifference and my work ethic. I was even more determined to get my degrees and accomplish my goals on my ten-year plan. I never stopped to feel - I just kept going.
The next major event was in 2019. I had just ended my first year of grad school, and I was looking forward to starting the second half of my joint degree program as a 1L Law Student at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall when my partner and father of my child died by suicide. The memory of the phone call informing me of his death and how it happened flooded my thoughts. The phone call, screaming, and visualizing his passing, replayed on a loop for months. My then 1.5-year-old was crying and being swiftly carried away from the room I was in. I stayed up all night sobbing and hyperventilating, rocking back and forth. I was emotionally unreachable for the foreseeable future, and no one including myself knew what to do.
I had never felt this intense before, and the emotions were overwhelming. I internally gave myself a month to get it together because I had to start my summer job and focus on caring for Scarlett. Shoving down, these feelings felt different - I was colder, less alive, and distant. I didn't know how to process it, so I focused on the things I felt safe with - which was work. After all, work couldn’t die. I decided not to continue law school because I needed to start working to support my daughter. I picked up a second job during my final semester of grad school, drank a lot, and set extremely high goals for myself physically, mentally, and professionally. I ran a half-marathon untrained, worked 30 hours a week, was in 15-18 credit hours in school, and also did extracurriculars like student government, justice reform rallies, case competitions, and research projects that turned into side hustles. During the school months, I lived 3-4 hours away from my daughter, and I tried to drown out those feelings, busying myself with people, jobs, activities, anything, and everything.
When I finally moved to MI in 2020 with my best friend following graduation - I was barely holding it together, and by the end of March 2020, I cracked. Every emotion I had refused to feel in the last 3 years came back with forces so strong I was left breathless, lonely, and sitting in a pool of shame and self-loathing. Some external pressures tossed me over that ledge, like professionally not measuring up, a global pandemic, family expectations, and being away from my daughter again. It was NOT a pretty sight, and I had no idea what to do, where to go with these feelings, or how to help myself. ”
How did you feel after reading that? It may sound familiar. If that process of shoving your emotions down to focus on work resonated - you might have the Overachiever Anxiety Language (take the quiz HERE to find out). But what I wanted all you messy fishes out there to understand by reading this excerpt is that emotions are messy, and life is chaotic. And denying or running away from the uncomfortable and sometimes soul-gutting feelings that come up in life only disconnect us further from each and ourselves. Grief is natural, and you will feel it with many events in your life. It’s not there to destroy you but to raise you up and clear you of the internal or past things holding you back. Grief is your soul expressing itself - resisting the change. Grief, at its core, is love. I can confidently say (and with a little bit of eye-rolling towards myself) that my grief helped me to love myself and my life more than I ever thought was possible. So wherever you are and whatever you are going through - know there is another side, and embracing your emotions and grief will help you get to the other side where there is more love and freedom for your soul.
This post was all over the place. But it feels perfectly right, and I know you all will get what you need from it. If you ever feel alone, like your feelings are too much, or you don’t understand them, you want clarity on recent life events. Or need help finding the “light at the end of the tunnel” of whatever phase of life you’re in. I would love to be that support, guidance, and safe space. I am proud of you and so excited about what is ahead.
Check out the ways we can work together below.
Anxiety Reading: Stop Anxiety from controlling your life and know the specific things you need to heal the past and free your present
Soulmate Business Reading: Take the guess work out of creating your most successful and powerful business
Customized Reading & Healing Sessions: Not sure what you need? Let's connect. I will create an energetic healing and plan based on your needs and desired focus.
Thank you as always for reading my blog and embracing your journey as a messy fish. Until next time fishes!
