Have you ever wondered about how you would feel if your favorite people began to disappear from the face of the planet? Have you ever wondered if you would be sad, angry, devastated, or even maybe, suicidal? I remember two weeks before my first husband died suddenly saying these words, "You might as well bury me with you because I could never make it without you." You see, I had just read in the local newspaper about a young husband and father dying in a tragic plane crash. For some reason, I would read the obituary column. I would peruse right past the elderly people dying and hone in on the young people dying. I guess I had some unconscious reason for reading about the death of young people. Maybe it connected me to my feelings. Maybe it reminded me that life was short. Maybe it reminded me to be thankful for what I had, a great husband, two beautiful children, and an opportunity to be at home with my sweet babies. Well, that night, I said those words: "You might as well bury me with you..." A few months later, that husband and father's widow became a good friend.
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The loss of a loved one can take you out of the game of life. You see, I was taken out. The first time, I was 29 years old. Every time I tried to enter back into the game of life, someone else would leave the planet. The second time, I was 49 years old. Each time after the loss of a loved one, I would decide again to try out for the team called "Life". Each time, I would get back out there to play but would quickly have to go back to the bench because I did not know how to play the new game. My position had changed. I needed to go learn this new position.
Research tells us that after multiple losses of your favorite people, your brain can get stuck and lose connection with yourself and who you were before the deaths occurred in your life.
Pioneering psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor worked on one of the first neuroimaging studies of grief more than two decades ago. She and her colleagues found that a loved one’s absence means a major disruption not only to our lives but also to our brains.
O’Connor now runs the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress (GLASS) Lab at the University of Arizona, where she tries to tease out the biological mechanisms underlying grief. In particular, she studies prolonged grief, a state in which people don’t seem to heal, instead staying immersed in their loss for years. In her book, The Grieving Brain (HarperOne, 2022), O’Connor explains how insight into brain circuits and neurotransmitters can enable us to navigate bereavement with self-compassion. “Grief is the cost of loving someone,” she writes. When a loved one dies, it can feel like we’ve lost a part of ourselves because their presence is coded into our neurons.
That has been a large part of my life. One loss after another continually challenges me to learn how to get back out there and play the game of life. But the game of life has changed. It is not the same game. Someone has handed me a puzzle box to figure out the puzzle but it is the wrong box with the wrong puzzle pieces. I did have the correct box but each time someone leaves the planet, they take the puzzle pieces with them. I am then left with the wrong box and the wrong pieces. The puzzle can be put together but it will take a much longer time because I have nothing to follow. No instructions. Just slowly finding the pieces with the same colors and possibly a similar shape to put with another similar shape. Tedious. Tiring. Time sucking. It's time to find another puzzle but what happens to the old box, the puzzle pieces?
Have you ever felt as though you were stuck after the loss of a loved one? Have you tried to "get back out there" but felt as though you had lost too much or that you would always be lost after the love of your life went away, far away?
The primary terrible loss of a spouse or partner is just part of the whole grievous equation. Because of that, you have to add all the secondary losses. The loss of the future you imagined. The loss of a helpmate. The loss of a second income. For some, the loss of a co-parent. The loss of someone to sit on the couch with you at night. The loss of a couple's privileges which affects the kind and number of invitations you receive, and your place in the social order. Suddenly you are a third wheel, harder to fit into the machinery of your previous social life. The loss of some friends, who are scared off by or impatient with your grief.
The loss of your part of your identity. We were Angela and Jason - a solid identity, sturdy on four legs. Now Angela floats out there in the world, alone, unprotected, and vulnerable.
So, how do you do this? How can you find your puzzle box with the right puzzle pieces? How do you keep pressing forward toward a new you when you don't even know the new you. Hope is central to finding yourself again to discover who you are inside of this new identity.
Hope will give you a place to hold steady that which is the best in you.
Is your story one of multiple losses? Does it feel as though your grief has multiplied with layers of sadness? If your answer is yes, then I have given you a link to a way of helping with the pain of grief. Maybe you can begin to find a way to navigate your grief, welcome it, let it in to the party in the first place. Susan McCorkindale, TedxTysons speaker and author, stated, "Let the grief become part of you. Let it simmer and see what it leads you to do."
If you liked this post, consider reading this next. I think you'll like it ;) It's more about how to find your way after loss.
Angela Stuart-Jackson, LPC, She received her Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from John Brown University. She is a licensed professional counselor in the state of Arkansas, USA. In clinical work, she enjoys working with individuals and couples.
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