Grief 101

It's taken me a while to figure out what I should blog about next after being so genuinely vulnerable in my last post. And not that I'm done, but I think it is important to document what I've learned and what has happened since I miscarried a month and a half ago.

The first thing is that in all the languages in the world there is only one name or term that means a parent who has lost a child. "Vilomah" meaning 'against a natural order' is from the Sanskrit language, but it isn't something that pairs well. That isn't something that you write down when filling out an application when it asks your family/relationship status. And while I understand it's meaning, at least when labeled a "widow" it means 'a woman who has lost her spouse by death and has not remarried'. It actually names its loss. I wish there was a better term to describe me, and as a writer and an author, it sucks that there is only one word and I find it unfitting to describe the roller coaster of emotions that I am going through.

Even as I am writing this, I don't even have a book that I feel can help compare my thoughts and feelings. The only thing that I can even remotely compare myself is that I feel like I am both sides of the story of Job. In the Bible story, after he loses all of his kids and his livestock, becomes covered in boils and is left asking God "why?" and "what did I do wrong?" and then his wife and friends saying "well there was probably something that you did to make God mad" or "what sin did you commit for this to happen to you?" and my mind is caught somewhere in the middle. Asking why me and wondering what I possibly did that was so bad.

For the last couple of months, once a month I have been going to get a massage because that was a gift I was given as I was going through cancer. The latest session that I had was two weeks after my miscarriage and as we were talking I heard crickets coming from the utility closet, which is apparently pretty common for them. And she commented that hearing them is good luck. Now Tyler and I actually have crickets chirping in our BEDROOM, and I keep asking Tyler to 'take care of them' because they are literally driving me insane to the point of near tears. And believe me, the irony is very apparent in all of it.

A few weeks ago, Tyler and I got a new puppy. He is a Pomsky (Pomeranian Husky) named Mando. We had been thinking about getting a dog for a while, but it was during this loss that I desperately wanted something to take care of, so we decided it was time for a puppy. The first seventy-two hours I was a wreck. We had taken so long to get another dog in the first place because of me. I liked the way things were and didn't know how Calypso would get along with another dog (they are doing great). And with the grief still pretty rampant and new, it felt like such a betrayal that I went and tried to 'replace' something irreplaceable; even if it was as simple as getting a dog and even though replacing was not a thought that even crossed my mind. My heart was ready to explode at any moment because I was trying to rearrange it too much too fast so that everything would fit right and that my Tyler, Calypso, Mando, and dead unborn child puzzle pieces would come together perfectly but I didn't have enough room. I felt like I needed to grow a second heart to fit all of the love and hollowness that I was feeling, but everything was overflowing endlessly and I had nowhere to put the extra; because initially, I felt like I had 'gotten over' it faster than I expected. Because how much can losing 'just a couple of cells' destroy your life? FYI you can have grief and postpartum depression at the same time, and the outcome is not great.

After all of those events, and during, I've been journaling an excessive amount, but I've made some epiphanies, but the one that I've found the most important is the one that I want to share:

Grief is an outward cry for an inward struggle.

For the most part, grief is selfish. It is asking "why is my life difficult," "why was I left behind," "why is my life changing?" That is why when we grieve, we grieve by ourselves even if we grieve together because we grieve at different paces, different things go through our heads, and every grief case is different and that is because no one is the same anyways. Most of the grief that I have been struggling with is that I know I would have loved and do love that child with 100% of my being and I would have done everything in my power to make sure that it was loved. And equally awesome and suckish is that as much as I would have loved and do love that child, God will love it infinitely better than I ever could. That is one thing that I wish I could out-do God because that means that the child would still be alive and growing inside of me and I wouldn't have cried an ocean amount of tears. That is where the selfish side rears its ugly head. After all, we all know that I will never be able to out-do God in anything and especially in that area because above anything else He is the God of love because He wanted to love flawed people.

I went to a Christian summer camp during the summer growing up and during high school, I had the same director for nearly all four years and his catchphrase was, "I love you but not nearly as much as God does." And I am learning how to transfer that thoughtfulness into the child that we lost. Because even though I can't be with my child now, God is more than qualified to take my place and I am learning to accept that.

Grief is a process and has a lot of phases, just as a swirling storm calms to drizzle to sunshine. I feel the storms beginning to lift, now I'm just waiting for the sunshine.

#aboutme #grief