Sunday reflections

[Wolfstarr]

Learning To Heal
by Linda Torres

There are many types of grief and loss, although a lot of people think that death is the only loss there is. Many people, though, suffer from other types of losses that to them are as devastating as death.

I experienced loss through my daughter being taken at a very young age. She was a vibrant and lovely girl whose life was cut short due to an automobile accident.

Yet through the years of my grieving and mourning, I have realized that many people want to dictate that we all grieve the same. I know that everyone that grieves has similarities, but we all grieve in our own unique way.

This is due to the type of loss and how we perceive that loss. It is because we all have our own personalities, religious beliefs, our genders, and many other factors. Our relationship with our loved one has a lot to do with this process.

In the beginning, we are numb and in shock, but in a very short time we find that we are in the fight of our lives. The world that we have been placed in is not the world we would choose to be in. We find that we are totally imbalanced and that the pain is one that no one is ever educated or prepared to deal with.

We are battered in the beginning 24 hours a day. Even when we have the luxury of being able to sleep our minds are continuously reliving the event.

Sometimes it is not just one emotion that is battering us, but more than one. And what we must do is give our pain a name. Without knowing what emotion we are dealing with we cannot work through it.

Grievers must learn to lean into their pain so they will be able to begin to heal. And they need to realize that they will never go back to day one—even though they feel that on bad days they are at square one.

Remember, if you ever revisited the shock and numbness stage it would kill you. So you must take one day at a time and learn the process that you are in the throngs of.

It is like a house with many rooms. Emotions that can easily be worked through are the rooms that you keep open and spend most of your time in. The ones that you keep locked and dark are the emotions that you should be working through. For they are the most painful and they are the ones that cause roadblocks in your healing. So you need to open the door in the beginning and just stand for a few moments even though it causes you extreme pain. If you continue to do this in small periods you will begin to be able to enter the room and heal yourself totally. The harder the emotion, the more you will heal.

I personally do not believe in the word closure. I find that word almost appalling, and I feel that most people should use the words reconciliation and resolution. For as long as you live you will always have a memory and when someone says closure it reminds me of a door being shut to one’s memories.

As you reach resolution, you will find that your memories become warm memories and you will be able to live in the altered world you have been place in.

May God walk with you on your journey.



About the author: Linda is a nationally certified grief counselor.

Copyright © 2001 by Linda Torres.

[indigo]

Beautiful Starr sister.