My father was lost in a world of darkness. The chains of mental illness wrapped their wicked fingers around his throat and squeezed until he pulled the trigger. That was January 1977, he was 36. I couldn’t wrap my young brain around that loss for decades. I only felt the colossal void his suicide left in the form of emptiness, pain, and lack. As a 9 nine-year-old child, I didn’t know how to grieve so I stuffed my feelings and lived.
Only it wasn’t that easy.
I had no healthy outlets in which to grieve, so all those stuffed emotions manifested in my behaviors. As a child that looked like poor focus, declining grades, unstable relationships, bed-wetting, and mood swings. As a teenager and young adult, it looked much worse. Let’s leave it at that.
If I could have a conversation with my younger self, I would tell her:
It is okay to grieve and it’s okay to be afraid. Cry, be angry, and wrestle with all the hard feelings. Scream, punch the pillow and ask God why and any other question you want because God is God, and he can handle the questions and the anger and anything else you’ve got.
Yes, grief hurts; people fear it, no one likes it because it feels terrible. It takes us by surprise, interrupts our lives, and demands its own way with our emotions and thoughts. But when grief is stuffed, it always finds a way out, like it did when I was a child. When we allow ourselves to acknowledge and feel the pain of loss, we begin the healing process.
Our culture seems to have forgotten how to lament. We will do anything to avoid the work of grief and bypass the pain, yet there is no other way to heal except by way of feeling our emotions. We either stuff our emotions or we numb them using a variety of methods including that fake Pollyanna attitude or trite sayings.
So, if someone you love has died- grieve If someone you trusted betrayed you- grieve If someone has harmed you- grieve Whatever your loss- grieve
You need to grieve your losses, not doing so can be detrimental to your mental and emotional health, but don’t do it alone. Reach out to a trusted friend or a professional therapist. We were created for community, and you do not have to suffer alone.
This world is subject to torment and bondage and not many will escape without scars. “He was despised and rejected- a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (Isaiah 53:3 NLT). If our Lord Jesus spent time grieving, why do we expect to “just deal with it” and get on with life as if this terrible thing never happened?
If you would like to make an appointment, press the “contact” tab and send me a message.
There still is nothing anyone can do or say to make my life okay. My stepdad screened at me daily of “no one cares about you. No one even looks at you. I tried since I was 16 to be someone. Here at 65 it was for nothing. Wasted energy and ruining peoples lives.