Before you start reading this blog, I am going to warn you this will be by far the longest blog post I have ever written - and probably the hardest. If you are a person who cannot feel different types of emotions, you might as well stop reading now. This blog took me eight hours to write and many, many tears along with a flood of emotion. If you have ever experienced any type of loss of any type of person you felt love for, you will hear my words and not only understand them, but also feel them too.
My intention from day one of deciding to share my loss was to help others - no other reason than that, but along the way it helped me heal in ways I thought I never would. This blog was written for me to go back to when I needed strength, but it is also here for you. For the girl who wrote me today and told me my blog helped her accept Jesus Christ or the woman who two weeks ago sent me an email telling me her decision to choose adoption over abortion was chosen because of the honesty in my blogposts. There is something big going on here through this blog - I am just a plain girl, no different than any of you - but God gave me something, a gift that has sometimes been a curse, with words - and here it is, my five stages of grief.
I hope you all can walk away from this with a little piece of strength knowing that we all got through this together.
Denial -
This first stage of grieving helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.
I went through the denial stage three times during my loss. The first time was when I had started bleeding and had the maternal instinct something was wrong. The doctor's office kept sending me home and kept going right back. I knew that something was off, but I was in denial that it could end in the loss of a child. The second time was when I realized I was in labor. My dad was sitting right beside me and I could have told him I was having contractions, but I didn't. I decided instead to just pretend I wasn't hurting - pretending is the worst kind of denial of all. The third time I went through denial, I did it big time. Right after I realized the baby had passed away, I sat there and just said "no, no, no." The word made me feel a little at ease, but it didn't take away the fact that I was needing to realize YES, the baby was gone.
As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process - but healing is such a calming word and the next phase is the total opposite of calm. It is real, raw, and honest - and it hurts - and nothing anyone says or does is going to help... or so you feel....
Anger -
Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, “Where is God in this?
For me, God became EVIL. I almost wanted to love the devil just to prove to God how much I hated him. I remember saying "I hate God" and my husband just looked at me with a glare. What do you say to someone when they are so angry? And boy, was I angry! I got mad if the kids even looked at me wrong, I cussed out people at the checkout line, I told family members I never wanted to speak to them again. Instead of praying to God, I sat and told him everything he ever did wrong in my life. I told DJ that I wanted a divorce and that I never truly loved him. I made flat out lies just so I could be even more angry than I really was. Anger is empowering - it felt good to make people feel bad - because I was suffering and suffering is best when spread around. I knew all about the power of anger because I have spent my whole life using anger to my advantage. Most of the fights in my marriage have been because of my anger - but I will walk away feeling better while my husband is left feeling beat up and bitter - and that's why the anger phase was the longest one of all...
Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. I am supposed to be the perfect, pretty, quiet stay at home mom with the perfect life, right? I mean women should never have anger as an emotion because it is so UGLY and heaven forbid we ever look ugly right? Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Like I mentioned before - when you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn’t attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn’t around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died, you have the control. Suddenly you have a structure – - your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing.We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.
Bargaining -
Before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one would be spared. “Please God, ” you bargain, “I will never be angry at my husband again if you’ll just let her live.” After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. “What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?”
I remember when the doctor's office called and told me that my labs came back and they were not good. Even though DJ had taken the time off of work to be home with me, I wouldn't let him drive me to the doctor. It was the longest drive of my life - alone - pleading with God. I remember saying "I will do anything if you will just let her live." I drove down the road thinking of all the promises I could possibly make to God to make him understand just how much I loved this little human being inside my stomach. I spent two years trying and praying and hoping and wishing for this miracle - and I was willing to do anything to keep her. I spent the majority of my pregnancy in this stage - and even though my husband is not as vocal, I feel that he may have as well.
We become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our loved one restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening…if only, if only, if only. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. I felt that if I would have gotten a second opinion or stayed in bed a little longer or asked for more medication, the baby would have been saved. I spent many days completely convinced that I could have done more, DJ could have done more, God could have done more, the doctor could have done more. The “if onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.
Depression -
After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It’s important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you’re in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.
I have suffered from depression and anxiety as long as I can remember. Most of it stems from a hurtful childhood. When something happens in your life to cause depression, you tend to also go back to that deep place the first time you felt depression as well. For me, depression was first felt when my parents split up and I was drug back and forth from parent to parent, place to place. I felt periods of depression when I realized that my mom chose drugs over me and really didn't want to be a mother at all. I suffered from depression in high school because I just couldn't deal with everyday life - and things happened to me that I just didn't think even happened in anything other than the movies. Depression has always been present and that complicates grief and hurt in my life every single time something happens to me. It sounds selfish, but I need to be selfish to heal sometimes - and you might too - and that is OKAY. It's okay to not be what society thinks is okay. You do not have a timeline that you have to "get over it." It can effect the rest of your life and that is OKAY - and that is something to feel okay about :)
Acceptance -
Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don’t ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality.
My acceptance really came the first time I prayed to God again. I said "okay, I understand and I'm sorry I said I hated you." It sounded so much like what a five year old would say to their best friend, but then again God wants us to be his best friend. He wants to be our father and our healer - but he cannot do what you do not allow. I accepted the fact that for some plan bigger than my own, he took my child to Heaven. He decided for whatever reason that her life was not to be lived here and that my husband and I would not get to ever hold her or hear her cry. He chose a plan that meant my kids would not ever get to meet their little sister. His plan was bigger than mine - it was his plan - and life was going to go on. I remember laying in the bathroom floor a few days after I lost the baby, exactly where I was sitting as I stared into my husband's eyes and realized he had also seen his dead child's body. It was the exact place that I looked over at my daddy and said "my baby is gone, she's dead, she's gone."
I layed there and I remember wanting so bad to hear God speak - and then he did.. he said "I dare you to move."
What does that even mean? Move where?? Then I realized, he wanted me to move on. I was stuck in a really bad place and he wanted to see me get past it. He knew I was strong enough and he wanted to see me realize that. He loved me enough to give me the strength and the push and the love and the support to get through it - and live to tell about it as I am today.
We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves.
I will never be the same. I have been forever changed by the loss of a child. Although it has brought more sorrow to my heart than I ever hope anyone has to feel, I have also survived it, I have learned from it, I have moved on. I still have bad days, but I am getting back to the old me. I catch myself smiling like I used to, giving my kids those tight hugs that for so long I avoided because they made me cry. I found out that writing is a passion of mine - and also that I miss singing. Sometimes when nobody else is here in the house but me, I will sing to my baby girl. I will imagine her sitting in my nana's lap looking down on me. I can honestly say that I am making her proud. I can honestly say that I am going to be okay - okay for me, not for anyone else, maybe not what society thinks is okay, but what is okay for me to move on, to be a good mom, wife, Christian - to love God always and put my family first... and just keep imagining the day I get to hold my baby in my arms.
Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones. As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves. We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time.
I made a promise to myself that when this blog was done, I was going to walk away from it and live a better life. I was going to be raw and honest with the people around me and tell them my true feelings. I was going to make my baby proud to call me her mom. I struggled as to whether or not I would even post this blog, but after the outpour of people telling me my words helped them, I knew I had to do it. I'm glad I did it - i'm glad I have shared my stages of grief with my readers and can walk away knowing I helped someone through their grief too.
If you made it all the way through this post, please leave me a comment just to let me know you were here. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. God bless you all - and if you are pregnant and scared and reading this, God put you here for a reason. Please e-mail me so we can chat - I would LOVE to hear from you.
And to my husband, I love you with all my heart and soul. For every stage of grief, there you were. Maybe you are not as good with words as me, but I could feel you here when you were able. Don't give up on me - I am still here, just trying to find my new normal. Always and Forever baby, always and forever.
*I used the website http://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/ to help me better explain the stages of grief in this blog. I was not intending to copyright anyone's work and was using these words to help others in the healing process. I give major respect to the owner and writer of this website who helps people better understand the stages of grief and where to get help if needed. For more information, please visit the website. If you would like more information about sex, pregnancy, or protection, I encourage you to visit www.itsyoursexlife.org also.
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