While everyone
around you sees the outside of you—the “normal” looking part of you—you know
that your grief and loneliness have started on the inside, deep within your gut
and soul. Your mourning starts internally and progresses outwardly, forcing
itself through the heart, nerves and tissues like magma in a volcano heats and
churns, boils, and erupts. Although you might not explode or spew rocks, ash
and debris like a volcano, (although that does happen when you’ve reached your
breaking point), your internal self feels the violence of the rupture, and your
heart and soul bleed red. You are mourning from the inside out.
And, like a volcano, you need to let
the pressure release, without trying to stop it up with a plug to quiet it down
or stop it, or pretend it’s not happening. That only worsens the
pressure and causes a more cataclysmic event in the future.
And that is why self-care is so
critical in grief. But, unfortunately, self-care is often shunned, negated,
belittled and considered selfish and unnecessary. As Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.
writes in his article “Healing Your Grieving Body: Physical Practices for
Mourners”, it is not always easy to care for yourself in our society, which
tends to be a “mourning-avoidant culture.”
Self-care is not about having or
doing it your way because you deserve it, or partaking in something frivolous
or self-indulgent. This is about caring for yourself because you need it and because you probably won’t
heal sufficiently or completely without it. As Wolfert says, “Without doubt,
physical self-care takes time, mindfulness, and discernment.”
The first mental obstacle recovering
grievers need to overcome is to feeling guilty because they have been taught,
or are frequently told by others, that self-care means you are feeling sorry
for yourself. There is a big difference between practicing mindful, purposeful
self-care and having a pity party. It means paying special attention to your
particular—special—needs.
Let me give you an example. A family
member recently sprained his ankle playing soccer. Sprained it quite severely,
in fact. Sprained it so badly that it immediately puffed up to the size of a
baseball and left him disabled and in tremendous physical pain, and discolored
from the internal bleeding showing up as bruising on the skin. No one would
deny by just looking at the ankle that it had been severely damaged. And it
needed care. Even though there were
no broken bones, the injury was severe enough to require an air splint and
crutches, with no weight bearing on it for at least seven to ten days, with a
total healing time of at least six weeks. Unfortunately, he tried walking on it
within seven days and had to return to the sports medicine doctor because he
reinjured it by walking on it. The doctor told him it was probably more damaged
now than it had been in the original injury, and his recovery time has been
lengthened and the recovery jeopardized due to his
early-return-to-normal-activity attempt.
I think everyone reading this
understands the wisdom of keeping the ankle iced (he was), and keeping it
elevated (he was), keeping it bandaged and protected (checked off on that one,
too), and not putting any pressure on it (he also did that, at least for a
week), in order to allow it to heal
completely.
So why is it that when we’re talking
about damage that occurs to the feeling heart, soul and mind that we ignore the
obvious and necessary healing required for that kind of injury? And if, as
doctors tell us—and we grievers can certainly attest to—the grieving causes so
many physical ailments and symptoms, why do we not pay more heed to the
resting, the protecting, and the activity avoidance that needs to occur in
order to recover from the damage loss and grieving do to us?
Maybe it’s because the pain is
something that we really can’t see,
and others can’t detect. And we think that if we can’t see it, then it can’t
possibly be there.
We feel loneliness in grief because
we’re lonely due to the loss. We feel loneliness in grief, because, so often,
few understand the grief process we’re slugging through and don’t give us the
space or the encouragement to enter completely into the grieving that’s so
necessary for healing and future a return to living.
Can you not imagine God drawing us
aside and saying, “It is too much for you. It’s time for you to come away with
me and rest. Just be still and rest.
Be nourished by me, be refreshed, be protected under my wings and within my
shadow.”
Or do you instead imagine Him
commanding you like a petulant old man to “Pull yourself together! Put on your
boots, lace them up and stop sniveling! What’s the big deal? Carry on!
Everybody suffers.” I hope not, because
that is so unlike God.
Self-care is about listening to Him
guide you through your loss, listening to your body as it tells you about
what’s going on with it internally, what its status is. You may move haltingly
forward and then take some steps backwards in the process. That’s okay. That’s
the way the body heals, inside and out. It requires daily, thoughtful
care—rather than dismissal, avoidance or neglect it often receives. And
premature return to “normal” activity. As Wolfert states, “…a lack of self-care
represents an internal disregard for your being. So, as difficult as it may be
for you right now, caring for your body is vital to your temporary surviving
and long-term thriving.”
Self-care is a prescription for
grief and loneliness recovery. It’s about taking responsibility for your
health.
And for your sake, and for the sakes
of your family and friends, do you not want to survive and then thrive? I know
if you are in the acute stages of grief and loneliness, it might take you a few
minutes to really answer “Yes” to that question. I do know that not caring about whether you survive,
let alone thrive, may cross your mind more than once. That’s normal too.
But if you’re reading this, I’m
going to guess that you have a tiny speck of hope—or you’re trying desperately
to hang onto one—or you want to understand or help someone who is grieving or
struggling in grief-driven loneliness.
Having emerged on the other side of
the valley of grief, I can verify that the self-care works, and the fight to
keep hope alive is worth it.
Next week we’ll look at how we can
carve out some self-care tips and strategies. (Some of these will be good for
those just struggling through the chaos of life that also causes loneliness!)
So, until next
week,
Thanks for
joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
photo credit:
<a
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/49000266@N05/13991696508">Grief</a>
via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a
href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>
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