The first few weeks after Morgan died were emotional chaos. I had no idea how to grieve.
Numerous feelings were swirling and raging inside my head like a tropical storm. I was hopelessly drowning in a raging sea of unfamiliar emotions, struggling to identify what was going on inside of my heart and mind. It didn’t help that I was postpartum, excessively hormonal, and recovering from a C-section.
Everything was so raw, so sensitive, so foreign. My heart was dark and heavy. It felt like I swallowed a black hole. Most hours it physically hurt to breathe.
In an attempt to cope, my mind would periodically “shut off” and go numb for a while. My brain was processing too many things, so it overloaded and froze. Like when your computer has too many tabs and applications open. System error. Reboot necessary.
I could hardly wrap my head around my new reality, much less figure out how I felt about it. It was so tempting to bury my head in the ground like an ostrich and wish everything to GO AWAY.
And yet… a small part of my rational mind knew that denial was not a good thing.
Sure, it’s a natural part of the grieving process, but it’s not a long-term solution for handling grief. So I knew that it was important that I try to sift through the tangle of thoughts and feelings inside me so that I could start processing them. I knew that the only way I could ever survive this was to DEAL with my grief and not ignore it.
But how on earth was I supposed to do that when it felt like there were a hundred things screaming in my head all at once, and I couldn’t understand any of them individually?
So I turned to the internet. I hoped that reading about other people’s experiences with child loss would help me put my indescribable feelings into words. Maybe someone else had “cracked the code” of the bereaved parents grieving heart, and if I just found it – buried in the internet somewhere – it would make it easier to navigate my own grief.
I just needed someone to tell me how to grieve.
Please, someone, just tell me HOW to do this!
Overall, I found this “internet process” to be helpful. I ended up finding things that resonated with me and gave a voice to my unintelligible emotions. It was wonderful to realize that I was not the only person feeling this lost in a new world of grief. It was wonderful to not feel alone.
Slowly, my mind started to identify the thoughts and feelings that were overwhelming my brain. This allowed me to start processing those things and file them away – much like closing one of the tabs in my brain’s busy web browser.
But while the “internet process” has been helpful for me in many ways, it was simultaneously a dead end.
Meaning, there are no real “answers” on the internet. There is no magical pill that will make everything better. There’s no one-size-fits-all grief relief. As much as I wanted there to be a “Learn How to Grieve in 3 Days, Or Your Money Back” quick-fix solution…it doesn’t exist.
No one could tell me how to grieve.
This was incredibly frustrating to me. I’m a Type-A, follow-the-rules, left-brained engineer. I love learning how and why things work. I excel at following step-by-step instructions to reach a precisely designed end-result. Assembling Ikea furniture is my jam. Just tell me how to do this grief thing, and I’ll DO IT!
Alas, there are no one-size-fits-all answers. What works for one person will not always work for another person. Searching the internet for how other people processed their grief could only give me ideas on how to process my own… it was then up to me to test out those ideas and see what would work for me. Trial and error. One day at a time.
I’ve learned there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Grief is intensely personal. Each person’s grief is as unique as they are. Thus, there are many, many ways people can express their grief:
- Write a book
- Start a charity
- Compose music
- Plant a tree
- Keep a journal
- Give money to a good cause
- Build something
- Create art
- Binge-watch a Netflix show
- Establish a memorial
- Write poetry
- Fund a scholarship
- Do a puzzle
- Adopt a puppy
- Bake cookies
- Get a tattoo
- Volunteer at a non-profit
- Make a photo album
- And the list goes on…
There’s an endless list of ways that people process their reality, cope with their grief, and memorialize the memory of their loved one so that they won’t be forgotten. All of these ways are a unique reflection of who that person is, and also of their relationship with the loved one they lost. There is no right or wrong way to grieve.
No one could tell me how to grieve.
As frustrating as this realization was initially, I began to appreciate it over time. Eventually, I realized how liberating this statement was.
No one could tell me how to grieve – but no one could tell me how NOT to grieve either.
There’s freedom. There’s flexibility. What I need right now doesn’t have to be what I need later. I’m not locked in to any one way of grieving forever. My grief will adapt and grow over time, just like I will adapt and grow as a person.
So I’m very glad that I used the “internet process” to help me start putting words to my emotional chaos.
It was really helpful to see how other people were navigating their own grief journey, and to gather ideas of how to navigate my own. I felt less alone in this new and unfamiliar world of grief.
I’m also very grateful for the brave, bereaved parents who shared their stories online so that I could read them in my hour of need. It takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable about such a personal topic. So I hope they know that sharing their stories has helped others – they certainly helped me.
Incidentally, that is a big part of why I’m sharing my story on this blog. I hope sharing my experience can help others process their grief and give them ideas for their own grief journey.
Just remember – no one can tell you how to grieve. Only you can. And as scary as that might be, I hope you’ll come to find the freedom in it as well.
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Please note that my experiences are just that… MY experiences. Everyone’s grief journey will look different and I do not intend to make anyone feel bad for grieving in a way that is different from my own. There is not a “right” way to grieve. Something that helps me might not help you (and vice versa). I just hope to bring some comfort to others by sharing my story.
