5 Losses in 5 Years

5 losses in 5 years.

Whew…

I cannot even believe that a few years ago I decided to specialize in grief when I went into private practice and then proceeded to experience 5 more significant losses in my life. A part of me is devastated and a part of me has moments that almost finds it surreal and comical. Like, is this real life? Are you kidding me? With each loss, there has been suffering witnessed. Each time, I buckled up, braced for impact, and took a deep breath before going under. I have been through so much loss throughout my entire life, that I know better than to ever try and outrun my grief. No matter how fast you think you are, no matter how hard you try to hide, no matter how much you try to shove it down, it will always find you. My losses are a part of me now, just like yours are a part of you. We never get to go back to the way things were before, or who we were before.

Just like everyone’s grief, my experiences have been unique. Having 5 losses clustered together had taken a toll on my mental health, the way I showed up within my family, and my overall energy. I can remember after my first child was born, I immediately received news my best friend was going to die. Somehow, despite that nightmare news, following a traumatic birth, and postpartum depression, I was able to find my way back to myself. I allowed space for the sadness and heaviness of it all, and eventually was able to have dance parties with my fresh little wiggly baby. It was so hard making it through. Fast forward through my best friends death, then the death of my Grandma, a global pandemic, and all occurring after the birth of my second child, and I fell into another deep depression. It was one of the hardest years of my life. I had so much to be grateful for, including 2 sweet little babies, but I was paralyzed with everything feeling so serious and so dark. I would put music on and try to bring back dance parties and there were so many days where I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even get my body to move. So many things about my life had changed. People who greatly shaped who I am, were just, gone. I was suffocating in the enormity of it all.

Depression is a weird thing. Not every day was awful. It’s confusing. Some days were wonderful and connecting and silly. And it’s the juxtaposition of it all that felt kind of maddening. Then, it all started to get better again. I started to gauge my wellness around how much I could access things like connecting my body to movement like dance, and allowing laughter back in. I recognized when I was just going through the motions on autopilot vs truly feeling my body engaged in what it was doing. I can remember putting music on some days and swaying my body around trying to find the rhythm, trying to connect with that inner harmony again and nothing would come. But I kept trying. I spent a lot of time in my sadness. It impacted all of my relationships, how could it not? Everyday I’d wake up marinated in depression, wishing I could sleep through the days. But I would peel myself out of bed, brush my teeth, wash my face, make that first cup of coffee, and listen to music by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Otis Redding as I made breakfast. (Even if babies were screaming at me in the background.) This was a practice that began after my first born, I did small acts to remind myself the importance of taking care of myself, giving myself small moments at best, even on the worst days. I would repeat my manta, “Today’s going to be a good day.”

When people come to me for grief therapy, it’s hard for them to feel the enormity of their own loss, too. My support is not only seeped in education and trainings, but from a place of deep understanding what it feels like to exist in these isolating, dark, lonely, devastating places - even when you have all the support in the world. There is some grief no one can follow you into. I have grown to understand the importance of asking for help, for letting all parts of myself exist in the same room - even when they seemingly contradict in emotion. The thing is, when you stop running you get to take all the heavy armor off and just exist and feel as you are, before the world and others conditioned you differently. Even in my hardest, darkest days, I am still liberated. When my body is anxious or depressed or feeling manic, I allow myself the pause to understand what it’s doing to protect me, what it’s trying to help me with. I am liberated because I have access to knowing myself so deeply that I know how to soothe my fears.

Almost every loss I’ve experienced has come with suffering. And if you’ve watched someone suffer before they die, you carry something in you that’s painful, that you can never unsee or unhear. When my body tries to keep me in overdrive and riddled with anxiety, I know it’s trying it’s best to keep me going. It’s actually working really hard to keep me out of depression. Eventually, I came to understand that to soothe these feelings, I needed to counter them with breath, with ease, and connection. When I’m overwhelmed, the medicine is slowing down. When I’m depressed, the medicine is connection. When I’m anxious, the medicine is routine and making things from scratch, to get back to simplicity. The medicine to all my heavy emotions are all the things that pull me closer to the present moment. It’s very easy to get swooped up and lost in grief. There is SO much to navigate and think about and feel, and sometimes our bodies intuitively can shut down because of how intense it can be at times. 

No matter how much each death has wrecked me, I rise. Each time, I rise, again and again. My best friend and I lived the best life together. My Grandma and I were so close. And when my dog got sick I gave him the best damn last few months he had and held him during his last breaths. And when my mother in law died a few months later, I knew she felt the enormity of our love and vice versa. And most recently with the death of our neighbor, we made each other’s lives richer by just showing up everyday. These are the risks we live everyday, whether you realize it or not, loving others so much that we simply cannot imagine a life without them. We will always receive more out of love than we lose from loss. It’s actually a little painful to type all of this out. I feel so much of their love all the time and the grief of it all holds that mix of deep sadness and deep love. It’s the knot in the stomach, the pang in the chest, and the lump in the throat. What a gift to allow ourselves to just release in these moments, to give in to these sensations. The body knows what it needs, it’s the world who tries to tell us differently. There is no ‘fixing’ or ‘solving’ anything here. There is just being, right here, with whatever it is you need in the moment, and honoring it. After the release is where I feel the comfort of remaining connected to my people who have died, it’s where I feel all their love, long after they’re physically gone. You see, when you try to stifle or minimize what you’re feeling, you don’t just push away the hard feelings, but you push away the beautiful ones too. So much of grieving is learning how to hold all of it, at the same time, and know there is no need to choose.

I’m not going to lie here, my life would be much better, much richer, and much easier had none of these deaths happened. I hate that I’ve lost all of them. But we don’t get to control such things. And death, it will come for us all. We have to know how to keep breathing, how to keep living, keep loving, and how to spend our energy and with whom. There is still so much goodness that exists everyday I open my eyes. There are so many people I want to keep growing my love around. And when my day comes, I know my loved ones will find comfort in how I was able to live my life so authentically. Everyone who knows me knows I love them deeply because I tell them and show them, there will be no questions or wondering after I’m gone. Somehow, I can still laugh until I cry and have dance parties with my babies. I will have made a positive impact on others lives who are grieving and trying to break generational cycles of pain so their babies don’t have to work so hard to feel at ease in their bodies. I am and will continue to remain liberated to myself, and while I’m here I will do my best to help others achieve this same inner peace. This work is so hard and healing and magical. No matter the loss, no matter how dark the depression, or debilitating the anxiety, I will continue to rise. And each time I rise, I will reach out to help the person behind me rise just as high. If this writing resonated with you in anyway, I am sending you the biggest of hugs. If your life still feels dark and you haven’t reached your flicker of light yet, keep going, my fellow griever. It is there, I promise you. What a gift, to be here.