Loss

I recently visited my mother’s grave over Mothers’ Day, and even though it has been almost 7 years since she died, I felt the loss of her in my life sharply, as though it recently happened. For many of us whose mothers have died, Mothers Day can be a difficult, strong emotional day. What helped me this year was to be at her grave and allow myself to feel the pain, and then to connect with my family and sisters. When I am down, connecting with people usually makes me feel better, but also alone time helps me to confront the darker mood that I am experiencing- identify what I am feeling and be present with it.

When a relationship ends, whether through divorce or break up (although it can feel like a death, actual death of a loved one is a different process), there is not a time frame of when you will start to feel better. I do know from personal and professional experience that you will eventually recover from the loss, but I cannot predict how long that will take. Recovering from the loss does not mean that you “get over it”, relationships change us and deepen us, so unless it was a very shallow relationship with no emotional connection, you will not just “get over it”.

Our natural instinct to pain and loss is to shut down for a while. We say that we will not love again; we will never let anyone “in” again, because it hurts too damn much when it ends. As the therapist, I will sit there, and although I too do not like to see others in pain, I also know that they are taking risks with living and loving, and for that I applaud them. I will sit along side them as they journey through their pain, and they will ask me to make the pain go away, tell THEM what to do, ask why they feel this way, and demand time frames for when they will feel better. I do not have those answers for them, but I know this: the pain will ease in time, you need support and gentleness the most right now, you need to eat and sleep the best you can, and you need to find and take comfort where you can. When the intense pain starts to ease, the space opens up to look more deeply.

Honor the relationship that has ended. Take the time to reflect on the gifts that the relationship brought to you- my guess is that at the least you learned more about yourself (your needs and wants), and at the most you had a relationship that changed you inside and out, opened you up to areas of yourself that you did not know existed, deepened you and brought in new life.

“It may help us, in those times of trouble, to remember that love is not only about relationship, it is also an affair of the soul. Disappointments in love, even betrayals and losses, serve the soul at the very moment they seem in life to be tragedies.” Thomas Moore in Care of the Soul